Malaria Blood Work

QUESTION:

What means smear for malaria – value 1?

ANSWER:

In most cases, I would suggest this means a positive result, though the exact meaning of that depends to some extent to the type of blood test it was. You mention a smear; to me, that implies that the test used traditional microscopy to look for red blood cells infected with malaria parasites. In this case, a result of 1 would indicate that one infected red blood cell was observed, meaning the patient is positive for malaria, although with a light infection (at least at that point in time – especially if the patient had falciparum malaria, the intensity of the infection can increase very rapidly). Otherwise, blood can be used in malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), which look for antibodies to malaria in the patient’s blood. In this case, the test result can sometimes be denoted by a binary value: in other words, 0 indicates negative and 1 indicates positive.

It is very important to find out from your doctor or clinic exactly what kind of test they ran and what the results mean, to ensure that correct and effective treatment is administered as quickly as possible.