A non-invasive, bloodless malaria test developed.

Researchers at the Rice University, Texas USA, led by Dmitri O. Lapotko, have designed a rapid non-invasive test for malaria, which uses harmless laser pulses, and neither requires drawing blood sample with a needle and syringe nor any reagent. Studies were first carried out on mice; and clinical trials on humans would likely have started .

The research work published on 27th November, 2013 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed how the scientists harnessed the high optical absorbance of hemozoin, the breakdown product of haemoglobin digestion by the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum in red blood cells, to safe laser beams to generate a picosecond-long localized vapour nanobubble around the hemozoin nanoparticles. These vapour nanobubbles called Hemozoin-generated Vapour Nanobubbles carry an acoustic (sound) signature that can be detected by a nanosensor called optical detector. The overall procedure involved attaching a fibre optic probe to the earlobe of a mouse; this probe sent laser pulses through the skin of the earlobe, and in 20 seconds the nanosensor recorded the acoustic signature obtained, detecting the presence of malaria parasite even when only one red blood cell in a million was infected, with no false positives according to the technology's inventor, Dmitri O. Lapotko.

And according to a report on the New York Times, the technology can be powered by a car battery through a device that is tough enough to work in hot and dusty rural areas , which could transform malaria diagnosis especially in endemic areas of the world by effortlessly screening one person every 20 seconds for less than half a dollar ( N75.00 in Nigeria) down from the current finger-pricking 15 minute-long test which costs more than a dollar.