Fig. 1

Plasmodium spp. detection using the fast COX-I PCR and the 18s-rRNA nested-PCR. a Percentage of successful Plasmodium DNA detection in four different assays using the fast COX-I PCR. b Percentage of successful Plasmodium DNA detection in four different assays using the 18s-rRNA nested PCR. c Percentage of Plasmodium DNA detected by COX-I PCR but not by the 18s-rRNA nested PCR based on 12 different assays; p value (McNemar’s Chi square test) = 0.036 (*) and 0.0038 (**). The predicted number of parasites based on Li et al. [32], in dilutions 1–8 were 15,348, 2586, 430, 71, 12, 2, 0.33 and 0.05 parasites respectively