Cultivation of malarial parasites: Conceptualising one of the method of diagnosis of malaria

• Author Details:   
• Sucheta Lakhani
• Jitendra Lakhani
• Shubham Darda ^*

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Background: Malaria is one of the diseases where successful diagnosis can lead to successful treatment and would be able to save lives. Cultivation of malarial parasite in a laboratory can aid to diagnosis and research.

Materials and Methods: We are sharing experience of cultivation of malarial parasite in 6 patients who had heavy parasitemia and 6 patients with scanty parasitemia. Successful cultivation could be achieved by continuous culture method using medium RPMI-1640. The cultivation was ended at 48 hours.

Results: The immature schizonts were formed at 24 hours, mature schizonts as 30 hours and rupturing schizonts into new merozoites at 2 days.

Conclusion: In cases of sparse parasitemia, the rings became visible in an enlarged form and thus could be used as one of the methods of diagnosis like we have it for bacterial culture.

Keywords: Cultivation of malarial parasites, Medium RPMI-1640, Malarial schizonts, Scanty malarial parasitemia.