High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is used in LITE to quantify the chemical content in samples of various vector control products for quality control (QC) purposes.
LITE offers a novel miniaturised high-throughput HPLC approach (Figure 1), developed by researchers at LSTM, which is currently undergoing CIPAC validation.
Figure 1. From Walker et al. (2022) Sci Rep. Comparison between the HPLC-based CIPAC-validated methods (top) for insecticide quantification and the novel high throughput miniaturised system (bottom).
Advantages of this approach include:
- Ability of quantifying two active ingredients (AIs) simultaneously
- Miniaturised: this method uses smaller sample size and smaller quantities of solvents
- High throughput: simultaneous processing of several samples and thus reduced run times
LITE can extract and quantify insecticides contained in a variety of samples, including:
- Insecticide-treated bed nets (coated and incorporated)
- Formulations from spray tanks used for indoor residual spraying (IRS)
- Filter papers taken from walls sprayed with IRS
- Insecticide-sugar solutions from Attractive Targeted Sugar Baits (ATSB)
The table below lists insecticides with validated methodologies but please get in touch if you have bespoke requirements you wish to discuss:
Insecticide |
Analytical service |
Permethrin |
ITN QC |
Alpha-cypermethrin |
ITN and IRS QC |
Deltamethrin |
ITN and IRS QC |
Pyriproxyfen |
ITN QC |
Chlorfenapyr |
ITN QC |
Piperonyl butoxide |
ITN QC |
Pirimiphos-methyl |
ITN QC |
DDT |
ITN QC |
Please see list of references below which report the use of the miniaturised HPLC system:
- DDT IRS: Coleman et al. (2015) PNAS
- Pirimiphos-methyl IRS: Fuseini, et al. (2020) Malar J
- Alpha-cypermethrin IRS: Goncalves et al. (2021) Trop Med Int Health; Goncalves et al. (2021) Parasit Vectors
- Pyrethroid-PBO nets: Ngufor et al. (2022) Malar J; Lukole et al. (2022) PLOS Glob Public Health
- Pyrethroid-PPF nets: Walker et al. (2022) Sci Rep; Toe et al. (2019) Malar J; Ngufor et al (2016) Sci Transl Med