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Simple, Cheap Test for Ebola, Dengue and Yellow Fever

When a fever strikes in the developing world, the immediate concern may be whether it is the common flu or something much worse that requires quarantine. To facilitate diagnosis in remote, low-resource settings, researchers at MIT have developed a paper-based device that changes color, depending on whether the patient has Ebola, yellow fever, or dengue fever. The diagnostic device can detect the viral hemorrhagic fevers in about ten minutes. It has silver nanoparticles of different colors that indicate different diseases. The device relies on lateral flow technology, which is used in pregnancy tests. Until now, no one has applied a multiplexing approach, using multicolored nanoparticles, to simultaneously screen for multiple pathogens.

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Diagnostics Materials Medical Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 they're among the most feared diseases in the developing World Ebola Deni and yellow fever when an illness strikes a remote area it's hard for doctors and patients to know if it's a simple bug or the beginning of an epidemic now researchers have developed a simple cheap diagnostic that can test for all three diseases Kimberly hammad shifferly and her team at MIT created a

    00:00:20 paper-based test that takes just minutes and requires no electricity let alone sophisticated lab equipment to read she's presenting her research at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston the diagnostic Works similar to a home pregnancy test we purposely designed it to be very simple not only to assemble but also to use and to read out the test uses nanop particles made

    00:00:41 of silver the size of these nanop particles determines their color so the team used three different sizes of these chemical ingredients and combine them with antibodies for the three diseases if the antibodies capture virus proteins from a patient's blood sample the result is triggered on the Strip Hamad shifferly says her test won't replace the laboratory but it will give doctors

    00:01:01 an idea of a disease's prevalence this technology could help with uh creating Maps so we can help um understand where a disease is spreading and where epidemics are uh and how the outbreak is evolving it's also much cheaper than Laboratory Testing we're currently at a cost of about $5 per test and we're aiming to make it lower test kits have already been sent out on a small scale

    00:01:25 and the team hopes for a large scale distribution within a year Hamad shifferly says the strips could provide a plat form for testing of any disease given the right antibody we always have an eye to what the new emerging uh infectious diseases are so um that's an area of future work she says her team will also work on making the test more sensitive to bring laboratory accuracy

    00:01:45 even closer to those most in need