Tetrapal—A New Technique for Malaria Drug Testing in Urine

摘要

Tetrapal is a Joint Research Project developed within the framework of an original public-private partnership between the Ministry of Defence, the French University of Marseille and Exxon Mobil Corporation. Malaria control policies and their compliance controls are high priorities for both the French army and ExxonMobil. Both organizations are interested in further developing processes that can be used to verify that soldiers or employees are taking their malarial chemoprophylaxis as prescribed. Currently, compliance is enforced and verified by using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) techniques for detecting the presence of mefloquine, doxycycline, chloroquine and proguanil (a component of Malarone) in urine samples. This procedure cannot be performed in the field because it requires special expertise, structures and technology not available in the field. The program is very expensive due to the laboratory analyses and shipping procedures required to ship the samples to a qualified laboratory. There is also a delay of several weeks between sample collection and laboratory verification.