Materials Science for Energy Technologies (Jan 2020)
Electrochemical biosensors for rapid detection of malaria
Abstract
Malaria is an infectious illness which has a huge impact on mankind and that cuts in government budgets across developing and underdeveloped communities. Children in the continent of Africa bear 90% of the mortality burden of malaria. Nearly 1.2 million deaths are caused every year in Africa due to malaria. Nearby 70% of the world’s malaria infection is located in 11 African countries and in Indian subcontinent. People suffering from early stage malaria progress to cerebral malaria although systematic treatments were followed indicated that advance and proper detection methods need to be developed and diagnosed the disease at early stage that might improve their care. It is vital to develop an uncomplicated, convenient, and economical, integrated biosensors that can be operated outside the laboratory by untrained personnel for diagnosis of early stage malaria. Main challenges for this require implementation of complex biosensing methods into low-cost technologies. Point-of-care testing is a medical diagnostic process which is conducted to the nearby patient and does not require any well trained personnel. This diagnosis technology should be economical and beneficial to the large section of population in developing nations. In this review, different sensitive biosensors for malaria diagnosis using several surface modification strategies were discussed. A unique redox cycling technology was described to amplify the signal to background ratios for ultrasensitive malaria detection which are suitable for onsite diagnosis. Also, some advanced nanobiosensing technologies were described on the commercial arena for following generation point-of-care testing.
