The effectiveness of malaria screening and treatment highly depends on the low-cost access to the highly sensitive and specific malaria test. We report a real-time fluorescence nucleic acid testing device for malaria field detection with automated and scalable sample preparation capability. The device consists a compact analyzer and a disposable microfluidic reagent compact disc. The parasite DNA sample preparation and subsequent real-time LAMP detection were seamlessly integrated on a single microfluidic compact disc, driven by energy efficient non-centrifuge based magnetic field interactions. Each disc contains four parallel testing units which could be configured either as four identical tests or as four species-specific tests. When configured as species-specific tests, it could identify two of the most life-threatening malaria species (P. falciparum and P. vivax). The NAT device is capable of processing four samples simultaneously within 50 min turnaround time. It achieves a detection limit of ~0.5 parasites/µl for whole blood, sufficient for detecting asymptomatic parasite carriers. The combination of the sensitivity, specificity, cost, and scalable sample preparation suggests the real-time fluorescence LAMP device could be particularly useful for malaria screening in the field settings.

疟疾筛查和治疗的有效性在很大程度上取决于能否以低成本获得高度敏感和特异的疟疾检测方法。我们报告了一种实时荧光核酸检测设备，用于疟疾现场检测，具有自动和可扩展的样品制备能力。该设备包括一个紧凑型分析仪和一个一次性微流体试剂光盘。寄生虫DNA样品制备和随后的实时LAMP检测被无缝集成在单个微流体光盘上，该光盘由基于能量的高效非离心磁场相互作用驱动。每个光盘包含四个并行测试单元，可以将其配置为四个相同的测试或四个特定于物种的测试。当配置为针对特定物种的测试时，它可以识别出两种最威胁生命的疟疾物种（恶性疟原虫和间日疟原虫）。NAT设备能够在50分钟的周转时间内同时处理四个样本。它对全血的检出限达到〜0.5寄生虫/微升，足以检测无症状的寄生虫携带者。灵敏度，特异性，成本和可扩展样品制备的结合表明，实时荧光LAMP设备对于现场环境中的疟疾筛查特别有用。