Simply Seeing

The diagnosis and treatment of rare or poorly understood tropical diseases is sometimes relatively straightforward in a well-equipped hospital with specialist staff. But by their nature, they often persist in areas with limited resources, so there’s a need for simpler tests. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a parasitic disease transmitted by sandflies. It mostly affects young people, and can be fatal if untreated. Diagnosis usually requires microscope analysis of samples collected through risky and uncomfortable invasive methods, or molecular tests that rely on specialist kit. A new proposed test promises to clearly visualise results with a simple blood test using easily stored reagents. A study trialled its reliability, compared to molecular tests, with suspected VL patients in Sudan and found it almost perfect. It produces easily understood results (pictured, a negative example top left, positive bottom right, and varied results in the other tubes), with – crucially – relatively cheap and simple equipment.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image adapted from work by Maowia Mukhtar and colleagues
• Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics—FIND, Geneva, Switzerland
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, February 2018