PATH and Quansys Biosciences, Inc. have announced the launch of a new diagnostic tool designed to help researchers develop more sensitive and reliable malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and to support public health surveillance. The Q-Plex™ Human Malaria Array (5-Plex) is a quantitative immunoassay that simultaneously measures multiple malaria antigens.

Many current RDTs function by detecting the histidine rich protein 2 (HRP2) to identify P. falciparum malaria and the Plasmodium lactate dehydrogenase (pLDH) antigen to diagnose P. vivax malaria and all other human malaria species. As RDTs improve in quality, there is a need to understand how these antigens behave in a malaria exposed population so that the performance of these RDTs and their potential to support malaria elimination can be fully assessed.

With a single sample, the Q-Plex™ Human Malaria Array can measure HRP2 and pLDH at low concentrations, as well as quantify P. vivax- and P. falciparum-specific LDH epitopes to distinguish between malaria species and C-reactive protein (CRP) as an indicator of inflammation.

Researchers can use the Q-Plex™ Human Malaria Array (5-Plex) as a reference test to evaluate RDTs in the development pipeline that detect malaria infections with low parasite concentrations and address the challenge of diagnosing P. falciparum malaria parasite strains that do not produce HRP2 and therefore are not detected by RDTs designed to identify the antigen.