Rapid Diagnostic Test Performance Assessed Using Latent Class Analysis for the Diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum Placental Malaria.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Placental malaria causes low birth weight and neonatal mortality in malaria-endemic areas. The diagnosis of placental malaria is important for program evaluation and clinical care, but is compromised by the suboptimal performance of current diagnostics. Using placental and peripheral blood specimens collected from delivering women in Malawi, we compared estimation of the operating characteristics of microscopy, rapid diagnostic test (RDT), polymerase chain reaction, and histopathology using both a traditional contingency table and a latent class analysis (LCA) approach. The prevalence of placental malaria by histopathology was 13.8%; concordance between tests was generally poor. Relative to histopathology, RDT sensitivity was 79.5% in peripheral and 66.2% in placental blood; using LCA, RDT sensitivities increased to 93.7% and 80.2%, respectively. Our results, if replicated in other cohorts, indicate that RDT testing of peripheral or placental blood may be suitable approaches to detect placental malaria for surveillance programs, including areas where intermittent preventive therapy in pregnancy is not used.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Liu, Y; Mwapasa, V; Khairallah, C; Thwai, KL; Kalilani-Phiri, L; Ter Kuile, FO; Meshnick, SR; Taylor, SM
Published Date
- October 5, 2016
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 95 / 4
Start / End Page
- 835 - 839
PubMed ID
- 27527628
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC5062783
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1476-1645
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.4269/ajtmh.16-0356
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- United States