Abstract
Early and accurate diagnosis of malaria is needed to prevent the spread of this parasite. To this end, we developed a novel microarray chip system for the detection of malaria, and evaluated it in Africa. A chip with approximately 20,000 microchambers was developed to detect malaria parasites (hereafter called a cell chip). Leukocytes were removed by filtration columns from whole blood cells. An erythrocyte suspension containing fluorescent nuclear staining dye was dispersed onto the cell chip surface and washed, creating an erythrocyte monolayer in each microchamber that contains more than 2 million erythrocytes. Malaria parasite-infected erythrocytes are then detected using a fluorescence detector. Accurate and rapid detection of the parasites with high sensitivity was achieved by the developed system.
