Now malaria can be diagnosed using affordable origami paper

Science has developed a cheaper and simple way to fight the mosquito-borne disease malaria. By simply using an origami-style paper device disease like malaria can get accurately and quickly detected in the remote parts of the developing world.

Editorial Team | Published: February 21, 2019 3:40 pm

Deadly malaria disease claimed the lives of 4,39,000 people in 2017 alone. @shutterstock

Science has developed a cheaper and simple way to fight the mosquito-borne disease malaria. By simply using an origami-style paper device disease like malaria can get accurately and quickly detected in the remote parts of the developing world.

A recent study published in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences has studied the relationship between folded wax paper and malaria detection. The study found out that the folded wax prepared using a printer and a hot plate helped in detecting malaria with 98 per cent sensitivity in infected participants from two primary schools in Uganda.

According to the University of Glasgow in the UK and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, the deadly malaria disease claimed the lives of 4,39,000 people in 2017 alone. One of the main drawbacks that prevent the spread of the disease is to diagnose it in individuals who are infected but do not show any signs or symptoms. This problem can only be addressed by conducting widespread field tests.

Due to the lack of resources in the remote areas, currently available tests are unsuitable for remote locations as they depend upon the process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that can only be carried out under laboratory conditions.

Now the team has developed a new diagnostic approach that uses paper to prepare samples for a different type of detection process known as loop-mediated isothermal amplification or LAMP. This is more portable and better suited for use in the field.

The origami technique makes use of a commercially-available printer to coat the paper in patterns made from water-resistant wax. This wax is then melted on a hotplate, bonding the wax to the paper.

A blood sample is taken from the patient via finger prick and is placed on in a channel in the wax. The paper is then folded, directing the sample into a narrow channel and then 3 small chambers which the LAMP machine uses to test the samples’ DNA for evidence of Plasmodium falciparum, the mosquito-borne parasitic species which causes malaria. The test can be quickly completed on-site in less than 50 minutes.

Professor Jonathan Cooper of the University of Glasgow was reported saying that we tested our approach with volunteers from two primary schools in the Mayuge and Apac districts in Uganda.
Following strict ethical approval, they took samples of 67 school children and ran a diagnostic test in the field using optical microscopy techniques, the gold standard method in these low-resource settings, a commercial rapid diagnostic procedure known as a lateral flow test and our LAMP approach. They also carried out PCR in Glasgow on samples collected on the field.

The approach was successful in correctly diagnosing malaria in 98 per cent of the infected samples tested, markedly more sensitive than both the microscopy and lateral flow tests, which delivered 86 & 83 per cent respectively, researchers said.

The study found that the result was very encouraging and suggested that their paper-based LAMP diagnostics could help deliver better, faster, more effective testing for malaria infections in areas which are currently underserved by the available diagnostic techniques.

Published: February 21, 2019 3:40 pm

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