5A. Visceral leishmaniasis has a very high case fatality rate but is difficult t

Question

5A. Visceral leishmaniasis has a very high case fatality rate but is difficult to diagnose: bone marrow biopsy, one of the best diagnostic methods, is expensive and is often associated with serious side effects. If you were developing a new diagnostic for this disease, would you be more interested in maximizing sensitivity or specificity? Why? (3 points) 5B. Assuming your new test is cheaper and less invasive than biopsy, would you advocate that it be used in conjunction with (ie simultaneously) or prior to (ie sequentially) the invasive diagnostic test? What factors would go into this decision? (3 points)

Explanation / Answer

Genetic sequencing could be done by drawing blood of the patient and running polymerase chain reaction which provides accurate level of diagnosis. Primers could be designed to amplify conserved sequences found in minicircles of KDNA of leishmanias and they could be tagged for confirmation. This test is least invasive as it draws a drop of blood on a microfluidic device to be sequenced later. This test is also the most accurate as it detects the disease at the genetic level.

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