Potential biomarkers and their recent applications ofr point-of-care biosensors for the diagnosis of malaria

Malaria remains to be one of the deadliest infectious illnesses and is especially common in underdeveloped and developing countries. Recent advances (2022–2025) in biosensor engineering, nanomaterials, and microfluidic automation have significantly expanded the capabilities of point-of-care diagnostic technologies for malaria. With the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international community, malaria-endemic lands have achieved measurable advances in disease control and elimination. Globally, we are witnessing an increase in cases of clinically atypical malaria and asymptomatic carriers, which contributes to misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis. Other challenges include climate change, socioeconomic inequality, limited healthcare infrastructure, the emergence of new vector species, and increasing resistance to antimalarial drugs and insecticides. This shows that additional efforts will be needed if malaria is to be eradicated. Creating simple, practical, and affordable integrated biosensors is essential to diagnose early-stage malaria. In this context, one of the main challenges is converting complex biosensor techniques into affordable point-of-care testing (POCT) technologies that could be employed close to the patient without requiring skilled professionals or special infrastructures. Unlike recent reviews that primarily focus either on biomarker discovery or broadly on POC technologies, this work provides a comparative and mechanistic evaluation of electrochemical, optical, and piezoelectric biosensors, emphasizing primary research articles. Particular attention is given to signal transduction mechanisms, analytical trade-offs, microfluidic integration strategies, and real-world deployability considerations. This review gives general information about the biomarkers used for malaria diagnosis and summarizes some prominent examples of biosensors described in previous studies for malaria detection POCT making use of different transduction formats. The work finishes with some general conclusions, demanding to progress the design of portable point-of-care diagnostic technologies and further research to achieve sensitive quantification of biomarker panels as the key to the future of malaria detection and global control.