Assessment of false negative rates of lactate dehydrogenase-based malaria rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium ovale detection

Jianxia Tang; Feng Tang; Hongru Zhu; Feng Lu; Sui Xu; Yuanyuan Cao; Yaping Gu; Xiaoqin He; Huayun Zhou; Guoding Zhu; Jun Cao

doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0007254

Assessment of false negative rates of lactate dehydrogenase-based malaria rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium ovale detection

PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2019 Mar 11;13(3):e0007254. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007254. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Authors

Jianxia Tang¹, Feng Tang¹, Hongru Zhu¹, Feng Lu¹, Sui Xu¹, Yuanyuan Cao¹, Yaping Gu¹, Xiaoqin He¹, Huayun Zhou¹, Guoding Zhu¹, Jun Cao^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ NHC Key Laboratory of Parasitic Disease Control and Prevention, Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory on Parasite and Vector Control Technology (Jiangsu Institute of Parasitic Diseases), Wuxi, China.
² Center for Global Health, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
³ Public Health Research Center, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.

Abstract

Currently, malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are widely used for malaria diagnosis, but test performance and the factors that lead to failure of Plasmodium ovale detection are not well understood. In this study, three pLDH-based RDTs were evaluated using cases in China that originated in Africa. The sensitivity of Wondfo Pf/Pan, CareStart pLDH PAN and SD BIOLINE Pf/Pan in P. ovale detection was 70, 55 and 18%, respectively. CareStart was worse at detecting P. o. curtisi (36.5%) than at detecting P. o. wallikeri (75.0%), and SD could not detect P. o. curtisi. The overall detection ratio of all three RDTs decreased with parasite density and pLDH concentration. Wondfo, CareStart and SD detected only 75.0, 78.1 and 46.9% of the P. ovale cases, respectively, even when the parasitemia were higher than 5000 parasites/μL. Subspecies of P. ovale should be considered while to improve RDT quality for P. ovale diagnosis to achieve the goal of malaria elimination.

Publication types

Comparative Study
Evaluation Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Africa
China
Diagnostic Tests, Routine / methods*
False Negative Reactions*
Female
Humans
Immunoassay / methods*
L-Lactate Dehydrogenase / analysis*
Malaria / diagnosis*
Male
Middle Aged
Plasmodium ovale / enzymology
Plasmodium ovale / isolation & purification*
Sensitivity and Specificity
Young Adult

Substances

L-Lactate Dehydrogenase

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Research and Development Plan of China (2016YFC1200500); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81603080); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20150001); the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology (BE2016631 and BM2015024); the Jiangsu Provincial Medical Youth Talent, the Project of Invigorating Health care through Science, Technology and Education (QNRC2016619); the Jiangsu Provincial Project of Invigorating Health Care through Science, Technology and Education. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.