Loop-mediated isothermal amplification for protozoan diagnosis: Review of ongoing development and implementations

Parasitic protozoa are emerging as global health risks worldwide. Accurate screening of protozoal infection is pivotal for an effective strategic control process. Traditional parasitological techniques, immunodiagnostics and PCR-based methods are the classical tools for diagnosing protozoal infection, even so they are labor and time-intensive, expensive, and occasionally give inconsistent results. The loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay, is a single-step amplification reaction that is an extremely sensitive, efficient and robust technique for identification of protozoa. This review aims to offer an overview of the present status of LAMP technology in protozoan diagnosis and to highlight this innovative tool and its future progress through comparison with other traditional diagnostic techniques. Moreover, LAMP essential principles were described and its fundamental goals, i.e., sensitivity, specificity, and overall diagnostic accuracy in comparison with conventional diagnostic techniques for protozoan infections were discussed.