Evaluation of Two New Fixatives for Peripheral Malaria Smear
Journal Title: International Journal of Contemporary Medical Research - Year 2018, Vol 5, Issue 1
Abstract
Introduction: Malaria is still a leading killer disease affecting millions of people worldwide, particularly in the tropical and subtropical areas. Till now, the cost-effective, gold standard test for diagnosing malaria with best sensitivity and specificity is stained peripheral smear for different stages of Plasmodium spp., even after invention of newer tests like Quantitative buffy coat and PCR. Staining involves use of absolute methanol as fixative. Using methanol is often very dangerous because its systemic absorption can lead to serious toxicities in humans like ocular damage and metabolic acidosis. Also it can be costly to use. Hence we evaluated three new fixatives, namely 70% ethanol, absolute (95%) ethanol and mixture of acetic acid (20%) and formalin (10%) as fixative for staining peripheral blood smear for malaria. Material and methods: We prepared four thin and four thick smears from each patient’s blood after obtaining written informed consent from them, fixed them with absolute methanol, 70% ethanol, 95% ethanol and acetic acidformaldehyde mixture, dried the smears, stained them with dilute Giemsa stain and observed the dried, stained smears microscopically under oil immersion. Results: The alcoholic fixatives, 70% ethanol and 95% ethanol were found to be good substitutes for methanol, and 70% ethanol even gave better results than methanol after staining as seen by different observers. Acetic acid-formaldehyde mixture was not found to be a good fixative for this purpose. Conclusion: Ethanol at both concentrations(70% and 95%) was a good fixative and can substitute methanol for the purpose of observing stained peripheral blood smear for malaria.
Authors and Affiliations
Ankur Kumar, Sayan Bhattacharyya, Asim Sarfraz
Keywords
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