Evaluation of Rapid Malarial Antigen Detection Test for Diagnosis of Malaria

Malaria diagnosis is one of the greatest challenges of public health. This is usually done by the identification of the malarial parasite or its antigen or product in the blood of the patient. The present study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of Rapid Malarial Antigen Detection test (RDT) by comparing with routine microscopy using Giemsa stained thick and thin blood films as gold standard for diagnosis. The prospective study was conducted over a period of one year with 700 patients who were selected based on clinical evaluation. Peripheral smear examination and RDT was done in these cases. 662/700 cases were malaria positive, out of which 455 were P. vivax,138 were mixed infection and 69 were P. falciparum. Overall RDT was 100% sensitive, 92.11% specific with positive predictive value (PPV) of 99.55% and negative predictive value of 100%.Even though RDTs are expensive, they definitely are an important tool in diagnosing malaria when rapid diagnosis and lack of trained personnel and infrastructure (rural areas) are present. But still it will not be able to replace microscopy which will remain the gold standard for malaria diagnosis.