Application of a cell microarray chip system for accurate, highly sensitive and rapid diagnosis for malaria in Uganda

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 30136
• Main Authors: Yatsushiro, Shouki, Yamamoto, Takeki, Yamamura, Shohei, Abe, Kaori, Obana, Eriko, Nogami, Takahiro, Hayashi, Takuya, Sesei, Takashi, Oka, Hiroaki, Okello-Onen, Joseph, Odongo-Aginya, Emmanuel I., Alai, Mary Auma, Olia, Alex, Anywar, Dennis, Sakurai, Miki, Palacpac, Nirianne MQ, Mita, Toshihiro, Horii, Toshihiro, Baba, Yoshinobu, Kataoka, Masatoshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 22.07.2016; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 13/105; 14; 14/63; 49; 49/61; 631/61/32; 692/699/255/1629; Erythrocytes - parasitology; Fluorescence; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Leukocytes - parasitology; Malaria - blood; Malaria - diagnosis; Malaria - parasitology; Microscopy - methods; multidisciplinary; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis - methods; Parasitemia - blood; Parasitemia - diagnosis; Parasitemia - parasitology; Plasmodium falciparum - chemistry; Polystyrenes - chemistry; Science; Sensitivity and Specificity; Silicon Dioxide - chemistry; Staining and Labeling - methods; Uganda
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep30136

Accurate, sensitive, rapid and easy operative diagnosis is necessary to prevent the spread of malaria. A cell microarray chip system including a push column for the recovery of erythrocytes and a fluorescence detector was employed for malaria diagnosis in Uganda. The chip with 20,944 microchambers (105 μm width and 50 μm depth) was made of polystyrene. For the analysis, 6 μl of whole blood was employed and leukocytes were practically removed by filtration through SiO 2 -nano-fibers in a column. Regular formation of an erythrocyte monolayer in each microchamber was observed following dispersion of an erythrocyte suspension in a nuclear staining dye, SYTO 21, onto the chip surface and washing. About 500,000 erythrocytes were analyzed in a total of 4675 microchambers and malaria parasite-infected erythrocytes could be detected in 5 min by using the fluorescence detector. The percentage of infected erythrocytes in each of 41 patients was determined. Accurate and quantitative detection of the parasites could be performed. A good correlation between examinations via optical microscopy and by our chip system was demonstrated over the parasitemia range of 0.0039–2.3438% by linear regression analysis (R 2  = 0.9945). Thus, we showed the potential of this chip system for the diagnosis of malaria.