Comparison of Various Techniques in Diagnosis of Malaria

Abstract

his study was conducted in aperiod from march to October (2013) in Abri city which is located in Northern State. The aim of the study was to compair blood film smears with ICTAg , ICT-Ab and buffy coat technique.. The study was conducted on 200 blood samples . Of them, 118 (59 %) samples were found to be positive for malaria parasites by blood smear , 128 (64%) were positive by the ICT- Antigen detection test. While the positivity of the ICT- Antibody detection test and buffy coat smears were 131 (67%) and 121 (60.5%) respectively. In this study the sensitivity and specificity of ICT-Ag , ICT-Ab and buffy coat smears were calculated. We used the BF as gold standard to compare our results. ICT-Ag had a sensitivity and specificity of 99.15% and 88.17% respectively, while ICT-Ab showed sensitivity of 96.61, specificity 96% and buffy coat smears had sensitivity of 95.76% , specificity of 91.11% for detection of malaria. The results also showed that the sensitivity of ICT-Ag , ICT-Ab and buffy coat smear in low malaria infections (1-10 parasites\100fields) is 98.07%, 94.23%, 90.38% respectively ,while their sensitivity in high infections was 100% ,83.33% ,100% respectively.However their sensitivity was 100% in moderate infections for all techniques.