Smartphone Accessory Can Detect HIV in 15 Minutes

Photo credits to owner

Thanks to the Columbia Engineering researchers for the development of a smartphone accessory that aims to detect HIV and syphilis antibodies just like an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test can do.

The dongle costs $34 which is portable and affordable. The device is a microfluidic cassette that can be attached to the Android smartphone or iPhone's audio jack as the power source.

The dongle consists of the following:

•  Disposable cassettes – it is preloaded with reagents of each disease-specific zones (HIV and syphillis viral protein)
• Assay – silver ions and gold nanoparticles are use instead of the ELISA's substrate and enzymes to magnify analytes

How to take the test?

1.      Disinfect the patient's finger and prick. It only needs a milliliter of blood.

2.      The blood is mix with a 9 mL of diluent

3.      About 2 mL of the mixture are drip into the cassette

4.      The antibody holder is place into the cassette

5.      The cassette is place into the dongle

6.      Then press the bulb and “start assay”

7.      Over 5 minutes, reagents flow through the chip

8.      A prompt pops to direct the user to slide the toggle so that a venting port is close

9.      The reagents mix

10.  After 15 minutes the result will appear

Getting to Know: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)

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Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infection is a more severe and potentially life threatening infection that most commonly occur among patients in the health care settings. It’s a kind of staph bacteria which is resistant to specific antibiotics named beta-lactams. These include the antibiotics methicillin and other more common antibiotics being used such as amoxicillin, penicillin, and oxacillin.