by staff reporter
New Delhi
SGRH RESEARCHERS DEVELOP AN ECONOMICAL ,ACCURATE AND RAPID PROGRAM TO IDENTIFY AND DIFFERENTIATE DENGUE , MALARIA AND OTHER VIRAL ILLNESSES FOR THE FIRST TIME
LEUKOCYTE ABNORMALITIES QUANTITATED BY AUTOMATED ANALYSERS SUCCESSFULLY IDENTIFIED MALARIA AND DENGUE AND DISTINGUISHED THEM FROM OTHER FEVERS
THIS WILL LEAD TO FASTER DETECTION, AS RESULTS AVAILABLE IN HALF AN HOUR
IT WILL LEAD TO COST REDUCTION AS ONLY FEVER SPECIFIC TESTS NEED TO BE DONE
ALSO IT WILL LEAD TO REDUCTION IN ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE AS ONLY FEVER SPECIFIC ANTIBIOTICS NEED TO BE GIVEN
Monsoon season has begun in India and with rains, every year , comes fevers of various types and etiology . Most common are Dengue , Malaria and other viral fevers . Doctors face challenge to distinguish Malaria and Dengue as both present with similar symptoms like high grade fever , loss of appetite , chill etc . Both peak in northern India around the monsoon and post monsoon seasons . And both may be complicated by thrombocytopenia and progression to shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation . Numerous non specific viral illnesses that also present similarly add to the diagnostic difficulties for the treating doctors .
This leads to recommendation of battery of diagnostic tests and start of antibiotics for all three groups till a specific diagnosis is made, leading to escalation in treatment costs and use of unnecessary antibiotics .
To overcome this hurdle , SGRH Researchers , led by Dr Manorama Bhargava , Chairperson , Department of Hematology , Dr Prashant Sharma ( now in PGI, Chandigarh) , Dr S Dutta and Dr Chand Wattal , Sr Consultants , Department of Microbiology , SGRH and Dr D Sukhachev , Lab Tech Ltd , St. Petersburg , Russia have developed analyser software programs to rapidly calculate economic discriminant functions which will generate electronic flags to trigger – specific testing . This path breaking research will potentially transform diagnostic approaches to tropical febrile illnesses in cost-constrained settings. The results have been published in 15th June 2013 edition of International Journal of Laboratory Hematology ( The Official journal of the International Society for Laboratory Hematology ) . The complete research paper is attached within .
How it was done :
The current study was done from April 2010 to March 2011 on 324 samples to collate data of dengue , malaria as well as patients with non specific febrile illnesses that mimic the two . The aim was to study hematological and VCS indices with a view to generate algorithms that Laboratory Information System (LIS) could potentially use to flag infected samples for further testing , thereby giving faster diagnosis and enabling judicious utilization of laboratory resources
