Wadood Saeed is a student of Doctor of Medical Laboratory Sciences (DMLS) at The University of Lahore. He has expertise in special chemistry and routine chemistry sections of medical laboratory. Before his graduation studies, he had worked in enzyme linked immunosorbent assays and Chemiluminescence techniques. While working in these departments, he had learned a lot in diagnostic techniques recognizing hormone levels and detection of viral load in the diverse population of Pakistan. His future aims are to become a Doctor of MLS and to enhance diagnostic resources in his home country.

It has been observed that in a particular population of Pakistan, Hepatitis C virus is very common in every 5th person living in diverse and well populated city, Lahore. There is a need to scan a number of population which is affected with Hepatitis C virus and to rule out the specific of them which are in acute stage of Hepatitis C exposure. My study very well evaluates those cases in diverse population. Semi-Quantitative technique has been used to isolate Borderline results of Anti HCV in human serum. The method used for its detection is Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA). A total of three hundred normal patient’s, Blood samples were taken from different areas of Lahore. All these patients were physically fit and seems no significance of HCV exposure. All these were with normal Bilirubin, ALT and Albumin. Eight patients out of 300 were found Anti-HCV clear positive and there ELISA shows strong Antigen Antibody binding. And five out of 300 were found in Grey Zone (Borderline) and the interesting fact is that all of them were HBsAg and Anti HIV negative so there was no chance of cross reaction. These five patients were isolated and took there samples again after five weeks to confirm whether they are positive or negative and their results showed up they are still in exposure but are not completely affected. Later on Quantitative (PCR-RT) results interpreted as negative. Hepatitis C virus has grown up so resistant that it can now survive in extreme non favorable conditions in human host at minute viral load. HCV has generated the ability to live in human without even causing any signs and symptoms and it might initiate a viral response in the secondary human host through different modes of transmission.

Tebit Emmanuel Kwenti is a PhD student in the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology at the University of Buea, Cameroon. He is a staff of the Regional Hospital of Buea Blood Bank. He has published more than 25 papers in reputed journals and has reviewed in over 16 reputed journals worldwide.

Background: The purpose of this study was: to determine the prevalence of malaria parasitaemia in blood donors in Buea; and to evaluate the performance of an RDT, a malaria antibody ELISA and a pLDH ELISA in the detection of asymptomatic malaria parasitaemia in the target population. Methods: In a prospective study performed between September 2015 and June 2016, 1240 potential blood donors were enrolled. The donors were screened for malaria parasites by Giemsa Microscopy (GM) and RDT. A sub sample of 184 comprising 88 positive and 96 negative samples were selected for the evaluation of the pLDH ELISA and the antibody ELISA. The chi-square test, correlation analysis were all performed as part of the statistical analyses. The cutoff of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia in this study was 8.1% (95% CI: 6.6 - 9.7). The prevalence was not observed to be dependent on the age or the sex of the participants. The RDT demonstrated a sensitivity (88.0%), specificity (99.1%) and negative predictive value (99.0%) higher than the ELISAs. The performance of the pLDH ELISA which demonstrated the highest positive predictive value (91.6%), was generally comparable to the RDT. The sensitivity was lowest with the antibody ELISA (69.9%), which also demonstrated the highest false positive and false negative rates. The detection threshold for the pLDH (3 parasites/µl) was lower compared to the RDT (50 – 60 parasites/µl). Non-significant positive correlations were observed between the parasite density and the pLDH titres or the malaria antibody titres. Conclusions: Overall, the RDT and the pLDH ELISA demonstrated a perfectly correlated agreement with GM meanwhile that of the antibody ELISA was substantial. The pLDH is therefore recommended for mass screening of blood for transfusion in the study area. But where not feasible, an RDT will suffice.