Benutzererfahrung der diagnostischen Fähigkeiten von SD Bioline Malaria Ag P.f RDT

High-quality diagnosis must be made a top priority if the war against malaria is to be won. With the introduction of the malaria rapid diagnostic test (mRDT), malaria testing has seen an unprecedented increase, particularly in non-laboratory settings such as homes, consultation rooms, and at the patient's bedside. Despite the increased access to malaria tests, clinical outcomes and, in many cases, the results of malaria rapid diagnostic tests are rarely correlated with the microscopic assessment of the same patient. These discrepancies necessitated this study to assess the diagnostic capabilities of mRDT results obtained with SD Bioline Malaria Ag P.f., an antigen-based mRDT kit. Using the Giemsa-stained thick blood smear microscopy method as the reference standard, a total of 110 hospital patients were tested. Of these, the Giemsa-stained thick blood smear yielded 83 (75.5%) positive results, while SD Bioline Malaria Ag P.f. only identified 26 (23.6%) positive results, with a sensitivity of 27.7%, an accuracy of 42.7%, a PPV of 88.5%, and an NPV of 28.6%. These findings indicate that there are many malaria-infected patients that SD Bioline Malaria Ag P.f. could not identify, implying that it has poor diagnostic performance.