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Clinical Microbiology Reviews, January 2008, p. 97-110, Vol. 21, No. 1
0893-8512/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CMR.00035-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Update on Rapid Diagnostic Testing for Malaria

Infectious Disease Service, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas,¹ General Internal Medicine Service, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC,² Division of Experimental Therapeutics, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Maryland³

To help mitigate the expanding global impact of malaria, with its associated increasing drug resistance, implementation of prompt and accurate diagnosis is needed. Malaria is diagnosed predominantly by using clinical criteria, with microscopy as the current gold standard for detecting parasitemia, even though it is clearly inadequate in many health care settings. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) have been recognized as an ideal method for diagnosing infectious diseases, including malaria, in recent years. There have been a number of RDTs developed and evaluated widely for malaria diagnosis, but a number of issues related to these products have arisen. This review highlights RDTs, including challenges in assessing their performance, internationally available RDTs, their effectiveness in various health care settings, and the selection of RDTs for different health care systems.