Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Infections / 03.04.2015
Biomarkers May Lead to Breath Test For Malaria
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Amalia Z. Berna
CSIRO Food and Nutrition Flagship
Acton ACT 2601
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Globally an estimated 3.2 billion people in 97 countries are at risk of malaria and, in 2013, an estimated 198 million cases and 584,000 deaths were attributed to this infection. Accurate diagnosis of malaria is important to provide adequate treatment, conserve valuable drugs, and help prevent the emergence of resistant strains of the parasite. It is becoming important to be able to diagnose low level and asymptomatic cases, to support the drive towards local and/or global eradication.
Detection of volatile chemicals in expired breath has been used to diagnose or monitor a small number of diseases, including Helicobacter pylori infection, diabetes and lung inflammation but, if breath analysis is to be more broadly useful, we need to identify reliable biomarkers for a wider range of diseases and to develop more robust methods for breath analysis.
In collaboration with Professor James McCarthy of the QIMR Berghofer Institute and Associate Professor Kevin Saliba of the ANU, we found:
- Four specific thioether biomarkers in the breath of volunteers with experimentally induced blood stage Plasmodium falciparum
- That the levels of the volatiles strongly correlate with the levels of malaria parasitaemia.
- That the thioethers are not produced by in vitro cultures of falciparum.
- That although we do not know the metabolic origin of the thioethers, our results suggest that interplay between host and parasite metabolic pathways is involved in their production.