Point-of-care diagnostic tests for low-resource settings

An Assessment of the Technological Issues and Options for Point-Of-Care Diagnostic Tests in Resource-Limited Settings

Feasibility of HIV point-of-care tests for resource-limited settings: challenges and solutions

Improved access to anti-retroviral therapy increases the need for affordable monitoring using assays such as CD4 and/or viral load in resource-limited settings. Barriers to accessing treatment, high rates of loss to initiation and poor retention in care are prompting the need to find alternatives to conventional centralized laboratory testing in certain countries. Strong advocacy has led to a r...

Rapid diagnostic tests for a coordinated approach to fever syndromes in low-resource settings.

To THE EDITOR—We read with interest the editorial commentary by Crump [1], which emphasizes the need for a syndromic approach to fever in low-resource settings—citing 2 recent epidemics of Salmonella Typhi [2, 3], the decreasing proportion of malaria-attributable illness in many areas, and changing vaccination patterns as arguments. We strongly agree with this point and wish to emphasize the ro...

Simple and inexpensive point-of-care tests improve diagnosis of vaginal infections in resource constrained settings.

OBJECTIVE Bacterial vaginosis (BV) and Trichomonas vaginalis infection (TV) have been associated with adverse birth outcomes and increased risk for HIV. We compare the performance of simple inexpensive point-of-care (POC) tests to laboratory diagnosis and syndromic management of BV and TV in poor settings. METHODS Between November 2005 and March 2006, 898 sexually active women attending two r...

The role of rapid diagnostic tests in managing adults with pneumonia in low-resource settings.

In well-resourced settings the systematic use of rapid diagnostics tests (e.g. pneumococcal urinary antigen test) that define the causal pathogen to direct therapy has not resulted in significantly improved outcomes in adults with pneumonia. The management of pneumonia in many low-resource settings is complicated by a substantial burden of tuberculosis and HIV-associated opportunistic infection...