MALARIA
Malaria and Blood Banking
Transfusion-induced malaria is an ever present risk in endemic areas. In the developed world, transfusion-induced malaria is relatively rare, however blood is excluded from potential donors who have visited malaria endemic countries resulting in reduction of the available blood pool. The use of a product such as the Cellabs Pan Malaria Antibody CELISA ensures that people who have the antibodies to the disease are excluded from the donation process, whilst clearing for use blood from those donors who have not been infected. Th need to maximise donor retention is even more critical in hypoendemic countries. Cellabs Pan Malaria Antibody CELISA has unique specificity and recognises all 4 Plasmodia species, as demonstrated in the recent IAB Congress Poster.
The highly specific and sensitive Pan Malaria Antibody CELISA, the first product of its kind and the world leader in blood screening for Malaria, is currently sold to and under evaluation in a number of blood banks around the world. This product, containing 192 tests per kit, is designed to detect antibodies against all four forms of Malaria.
Malaria Drug Sensitivity Testing
Cellabs produces a special product for Malaria drug sensitivity studies based on the regular Malaria Ag CELISA kit.
The Malaria Ag CELISA Bulk (Catalogue number KM2BP) is a specialised product which contains reagents for 960 tests (10 plates). Following a protocol used by Dr Harald Noedl, the kit contains enough reagents for approximately 120 patient studies per individual antimalarial drug. This product is reserved for bona fide medical research laboratories conducting drug sensitivity testing on patient samples and sold only by Cellabs directly to the customer in order to minimise end-user costs.
The modified Cellabs product has been extensively evaluated and validated in Malaria endemic regions, for example by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), by the bangkok USAMC-AFRIMS unit and by Dr Harald Noedl (University of Vienna). The method using Cellabs kits originally published by Dr Noedl contained samples from Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The reference is as below:
Noedl H., Wensdorfer W.H., Miller R.S. and Wongsirichanalai C. (2002). Histidine Rich Protein II: a novel approach to malaria drug sensitivity testing. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, June 2002, p. 1658-1664
Advantages of HRP-II method
The Malaria Ag CELISA (HRP-II ELISA) method for drug sensitivity studies presents the following advantages:
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No radiactive isotopes to handle or the expense asssociated with such a measuring device
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Sensitvity equivalent to WHO Schizont maturation test (approximately 0.01% initial parasite density).
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Quality controlled product from Cellabs, built to strict ISO 9002/GMP standards. This ensures consistency of results and no need to calibrate the assay extensively, as would be required for an in-house assay.
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No expert technical skills or expensive equipment needed. Can be run in a fairly basic laboratory in a developing country.
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Significantly less laborious than the DELI assay.
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Sold directly by Cellabs to Malaria research centres. Elimination of intermediaries in order ot minimise end-user cost per test.
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Delivered ANYWHERE in the world by air freight
Relevant Publications
Noedl H., Wongsrichanalai C., and Wernsdorfer W.H. (2003) Malaria Drug Sensitivity Testing: new assays, new perspectives. Trends in Parasitology, Vol 19 (4): p175-181
Useful Links
WHO-TDR http://www.who.int/tdr
Malaria Consortium http://www.malariaconsortium.org
Multilateral Initiative on Malaria http://mim.nih.gov/english/partnerships/index.html
Malaria-farch.net http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/harald.noedl/malaria/index.html |
