The doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have devised a test (software) for quick diagnosis of dengue, malaria or viral fever — the most common in monsoon.
Doctors usually put patients with complaints of high fever on antibiotics, owing to a lengthy procedure of diagnosis for dengue or malaria. The formula devised can detect in one hour’s time as to what kind of fever the patient is suffering from. Moreover, the new test would also suit all pockets as it costs only Rs200 per test.
“Doctors face challenges in distinguishing malaria and dengue as both present similar symptoms like high fever, loss of appetite and chill. These diseases including viral infections peak in North India mainly during monsoon,” said Manorama Bhargava, Chairperson, Department of Haematology of the hospital. She said that patients undergo a number of tests and are put on antibiotics for all three diseases till a specific diagnosis is made.
This leads to an escalated treatment cost and use of unnecessary antibiotics. In order to stop this uncontrolled routine of treatment with antibiotics, this software analyser can identify the disease-type at one go.
“We analysed blood count and VCS parameters, which are present in the leukocyte (white blood cells), of 114 malaria patients, 105 dengue patients, and 105 febrile controls without dengue or malaria. Statistical discriminant functions were generated, and their diagnostic performances were assessed by ROC curve analysis. We found that the leukocyte abnormalities quantitated by automated analysers successfully identified malaria and dengue and distinguished them from other fevers. These economic discriminant functions can be rapidly calculated by analyser software programs to generate electronic flags to trigger-specific testing,” Bhargava explained.
“As a result, doctors will restraint from prescribing antibiotics which are basically useless for diseases like malaria and dengue. Popping so many antibiotics also decreases the resistance of patients towards antibiotics, and the detailed investigations of getting serology test for dengue and NSI antigens done would not be required,” Bhargava added.
A research paper in this regard has been published in the June 15 edition of International Journal of laboratory Haematology — the official journal of the International Society for laboratory Haematology. The reasearch was done in collaboration with a Russian laboratory.