Acta Scientific Medical Sciences (ASMS)(ISSN: 2582-0931)

Research Article Volume 7 Issue 7

A Comparison of Blood Smear Microscopy, Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT), and Urine Malaria Test (UMT) for the Diagnosis of Malaria in Children Aged ≤ 5 Years

Agbor Neji Ebuta1,2*, Lawrence Akin-Moses3, Adamu Onu2, Nathan Ukuoghene Ikimi1, Victoria Ogala-Akogwu1

1State House Medical Center, Asokoro, Abuja, Nigeria
2Garki Hospital Abuja, Nigeria
3National Hospital Abuja, Nigeria

*Corresponding Author: Agbor Neji EBUTA, State House Medical Center, Abuja, Nigeria.

Received: April 27, 2023; Published: June 09, 2023

Abstract

Background: Malaria is a major global public health challenge. Diagnosis is a critical link to mitigating its impact. New malaria diagnostic methods that simplify malaria testing, might improve acceptance, access to tests, and compliance with the test before treatment policy of WHO. While microscopy and RDT are established, UMT is novel and merits further evaluation.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional diagnostic test study, 262 children with presumptive malaria were recruited. All were tested with the three methods: microcopy, RDT, and UMT.

Results: The prevalence of malaria using microscopy, RDT, and UMT test methods were 33.59% (88), 20.99% (55), and 2.67% (7) respectively. Only fathers’ educational status showed a significant association with malaria test outcomes (i.e., positive or negative). The sensitivity of RDT was 29.5%, and its specificity was 83.3%. It’s positive predictive and negative predictive values were 47.3% and 70% respectively. UMT recorded a sensitivity of 4.5% and specificity of 98.3%, while its positive predictive and negative predictive values were 57.1% and 67.1% respectively.

Conclusion: The UMT, though preferred by the patient’s guardians, had lower sensitivity and specificity compared to microscopy and RDT. More research is still needed to make UMT robust for clinical practice use.

 Keywords: Malaria; Giemsa Microscopy; Rapid Diagnostic Test; Urine Malaria Test Kits

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Citation

Citation: Agbor Neji Ebuta., et al. “A Comparison of Blood Smear Microscopy, Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT), and Urine Malaria Test (UMT) for the Diagnosis of Malaria in Children Aged ≤ 5 Years”.Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 7.7 (2023): 26-33.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2023 Agbor Neji Ebuta., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.




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