Comparative Assessment of Diagnostic Performances of Two Commercial Rapid Diagnostic Test Kits for Detection of Plasmodium spp. in Ugandan Patients with Malaria

Prompt diagnosis of malaria cases with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has been widely adopted as an effective malaria diagnostic tool in many malaria endemic countries, primarily due to their easy operation, fast result output, and straightforward interpretation. However, there has been controversy about the diagnostic accuracy of RDTs. This study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performances of the 2 commercially available malaria RDT kits, RapiGEN Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan EasyTest(TM) Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) for their abilities to detect Plasmodium species in blood samples collected from Ugandan patients with malaria. To evaluate the diagnostic performances of these 2 RDT kits, 229 blood samples were tested for malaria infection by microscopic examination and a species-specific nested polymerase chain reaction. The detection sensitivities for P. falciparum of Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan EasyTest(TM) Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) were 87.83% and 89.57%, respectively. The specificities of the 2 RDTs were 100% for P. falciparum and mixed P. falciparum/P. vivax infections. These results suggest that the 2 RDT kits showed reasonable levels of diagnostic performances for detection of the malaria parasites from Ugandan patients. However, neither kit could effectively detect P. falciparum infections with low parasitaemia (<500 parasites/μl).