Development of a cell microarray chip system for early and accurate malaria diagnosis: — Finding one parasite in 2 million erythrocytes for elimination of malaria —@@@— 200万分の1の感染を見出しマラリアに立ち向かう —

−34− Synthesiology English edition Vol.10 No.1 pp.34–41 (Jul. 2017) detection limit of RDT is equivalent to the analysis of Giemsa microscopy, and incidences of false-positives and falsenegatives are common. Therefore, it is used as a preliminary screening method prior to the definitive diagnosis by the Giemsa microscopy. It is not possible to calculate the infection rate with RDT (i.e. diagnosis of infection only), and this is one of the disadvantages. Recently, new diagnostic methods utilizing the flow cytometer and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been developed, but the sensitivity is insufficient for early diagnosis, and several hours are required before the results are obtained, respectively. To prevent infection by early detection of malaria, development of a new diagnostic method with high sensitivity, accuracy, quickness, and easy operation is demanded. The characteristics of each diagnostic method are shown in Table 1.