Application of dried blood spot sample pooling strategies for Plasmodium 18S rRNA biomarker testing to facilitate identification of infected persons in large-scale epidemiological studies

Table 3 Stability of P. falciparum culture 18S rRNA in DBS stored at four different temperatures

DBS control level	Estimated parasites/mL	Log₁₀ copies/mL blood	Pf qRT-PCR			Pan qRT-PCR
			P value by Welch’s t-test for log₁₀ copies/mL blood
			− 20 °C vs.− 80 °C	22 °C vs. − 80 °C	37 °C vs. − 80 °C	− 20 °C vs. − 80 °C	22 °C vs. − 80 °C	37 °C vs. − 80 °C
High	3.5 × 10⁶	10.41	0.719	0.340	0.034	0.647	0.441	0.037
Moderate	1.2 × 10⁴	7.95	0.376	0.012	0.077	0.362	0.013	0.044
Low	1.4 × 10³	7.02	0.207	0.637	0.935	0.292	0.874	0.330
Very Low	5 × 10²	6.57	0.812	0.716	0.457	0.694	0.804	0.558

ISSN: 1475-2875