Image Credits: Pexels
Fortunately, researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A., have developed a testing device that can be attached to a smartphone to detect the Zika virus in the blood.
What is the Zika virus?
“Mosquito-borne viruses cause serious diseases, but they have similar symptoms. If you have Zika, malaria, dengue, or chikungunya, you just might show up to the doctor with a fever, and they won’t know why,” said Brian Cunningham, study author. “But it’s important to know whether it’s Zika, especially if the patient is a pregnant woman, because the consequences to a developing fetus are really severe.”
How is the Zika virus detected?
Image Credits: Analyst
How does the Clip-on device work?
The clip-on device consists of a cartridge that can be clipped or attached to a smartphone to perform the test. The cartridge contains reagents and chemical substances that can identify the virus in the blood sample. When a patient puts a blood drop on it, one set of chemicals reacts with viruses in the blood cells within five minutes. The device also has a heater placed below the cartridge that heats the sample to 65 degrees Celcius, a required temperature for the LAMP process. Then, the second set of chemicals amplifies (makes copies) the viral genetic material and reacts with it. After this, if the liquid inside the cartridge produces green fluorescent light, it implies the Zika virus test positive. This detection method takes 25 minutes to show results.
“The other cool aspect is that we’re doing the readout with a smartphone,” said Cunningham. “We’ve designed a clip-on device so that the smartphone’s rear camera is looking at the cartridge while the amplification occurs. When there’s a positive reaction, you see little green blooms of fluorescence that eventually fill up the entire cartridge with green light.”
The researchers’ next step is to develop devices that can detect other mosquito transmitting diseases other than Zika. Moreover, they are working on reducing the device’s size. “Although our clip-on detector is pretty small, a lot of the space is taken up by the batteries. In the next version, it will be powered by the phone’s battery,” said Cunningham.
The study was published in the journal Analyst.
Follow us on Medium!
