Assessment of Clinical Diagnosis, Microscopy, Rapid Diagnostic Tests, and Polymerase Chain Reaction in the Diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum in Nigeria

Table 1

Characteristics of study subjects and prevalence of malaria based on different diagnostic methods.

Number of subjects	217
Mean age (years)	8 years ± 3.04
Sex male/female	103/114
Mean temperature °C	38.2°C (±0.96)
No. positive by microscopy (%), MPD ± SD	106 (48.8%), 1579.21±7869.29
No. positive by RDT (%)	84 (38.7%)
No. positive by stevor PCR (%)	125 (57.6%)

MPD: mean parasite density by microscopy.
Microscopy versus RDT versus PCR = P = 0.0005.