New Research Focuses on The Aroma of Malarial Infection
“Our previous work in a mouse model found that malaria infection altered the odors of infected mice in ways that made them more attractive to mosquitoes, particularly at a stage of infection where the transmissible stage of the parasite was present at high levels,” said Consuelo De Moraes, adjunct professor of biology, Penn State, and professor of environmental systems science, ETH Zurich. “We also found long-term changes in the odor profiles of infected mice.”
The researchers at Penn State University have characterised the distinctive profile of volatile organic compounds which are essentially chemicals often perceived as smells—produced by people infected with Plasmodium.
Thereby enabling researchers to identify the odor of malaria as mosquitoes smell it. The team has now proposed an odor-based technology to detect malaria with far greater accuracy than any method currently available, even in patients who show no symptoms.
The researchers state “our models identified asymptomatic infections with 100 percent sensitivity, even in the case of low-level infections not detectable by microscopy.” These results far exceed any currently available rapid diagnostic tests.
The team originally employed microscopy and an SD Bioline Rapid Diagnostic Test to spot patients with malaria. As these
approaches have limited sensitivity, especially when parasite loads are reduced, diseases were confirmed by DNA tests. They identified 333 individuals who unambiguously were infected with malaria or weren’t infected with malaria.Only if the both microscopy and DNA research were negative were subjects believed malaria-free. Infected patients initially were equally microscopy and DNA positive for malaria. In some later investigations, the investigators included 77 individuals who were positive for malaria based on DNA, but revealed no parasites at the microscopic evaluations.
“It is interesting that the symptomatic and asymptomatic infections were different from each other as well as from healthy people,” said Mark C. Mescher, adjunct professor of biology, Penn State, and professor of environmental systems science, ETH Zurich.
“In the near term, our goal is to refine the current findings to find the most reliable and effective biomarkers we can,” said Mescher. “This is really basic science to identify the biomarkers of malaria. There is still a lot more work to be done to develop a practical diagnostic assay.”
