A fast, needle-free malaria detection tool developed by a University of Queensland-led team could help save hundreds of thousands of lives annually. Malaria is usually detected by a blood test, but scientists have devised a method using a device that shines a beam of harmless infrared light on a person’s ear or finger for five-to-10 seconds, it collects an infrared signature that is processed by a computer algorithm. Inter­national team leader, Maggy Lord from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, said the technology would revolutionize how malaria is fought globally.

“Currently it’s incredibly challenging to test large groups of people, such as the population of a village or town – you have to take blood from everyone and mix it with a reagent to get a result,” Lord said. “But with this tool we can find out very quickly whether a whole village or town is suffering from, or carrying, malaria.” The technique is chemical-free, needle-free and detects malaria through the skin using infrared-light – it’s literally just a flash on a person’s skin and it’s done. The device is smart-phone operated, so results are acquired in real time.

The researchers believe the technology is the first step to eli­minating malaria. “According to the World Health Organi­zation malaria report, in 2020 there were an estimated 241 million cases worldwide and more than 600,000 died from malaria,” Lord said. Most of the cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 per cent of deaths are children under five years old. The biggest challenge in eliminating the disease is the presence of asymp­tomatic people in a population who act as a reservoir for trans­mission by mosquitos.

The World Health Organi­zation has proposed large-scale surveil­lance in endemic areas and this non-invasive, affordable and rapid tool offers a way to achieve that. The technology could also help tackle other diseases. “We’ve success­fully used this techno­logy on mosquitoes to non-invasively detect infections such as malaria, Zika and dengue,” Lord said. “In our post-COVID world, it could be used to better tackle diseases as people move around the globe. We hope the tool could be used at ports of entry to screen travellers, mini­mizing the re-intro­duction of diseases and reducing global outbreaks. It’s still early days, but this proof-of-concept is exciting.” (Source: U. Queensland)

Reference: G. A. Garcia et al.: Malaria absorption peaks acquired through the skin of patients with infrared light can detect patients with varying parasitemia, PNAS Nexus, online 7 December 2022; DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac272

Link: School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia