Rapid Diagnostic Tests in Malaria Diagnosis and Discordance between RDT and Microscopy: A Review

Abstract

Malaria can be diagnosed with microscopy as well as by Rapid diagnostic tests or RDTs. RDTs may miss low level of parasitemia and in many cases, may also be false positive. RDTs can detect various antigens in different stages of the malaria parasite. Sometimes stained smear may be positive but RDT may appear to be negative, owing to low parasite count. The reverse is also true in many cases, where gene deletions or antigenic persistence occur. This is important from the viewpoint of applied immunology. All these interesting aspects have been reviewed here.