Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy- A new diagnostic tool for diagnosing pathogens and analytes in blood and sera

As disease diagnosis at remote regions needs special care, traditional diagnostic tools prove less capable. This thesis focuses on the development of a cheap yet accurate diagnostic kit for malaria, hepatitis B and hepatitis C infection using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. Qualitative and quantitative studies were performed on clinical samples, which showed that ATR-FTIR could efficiently discriminate infected samples from uninfected samples. This technique successfully identified biomarkers and blood analytes (glucose, urea, immunoglobulin, lipid and proteins level), which was vital to understand host response upon infection. Thus, this work suggests the possibility to use ATR-FTIR as a cheaper diagnostic tool.