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Wednesday 25 Feb 2015 - 14:17 Makkah mean time-6-5-1436  Photo: MIT News Cambridge (IINA) – Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge have developed a new device which can diagnose Ebola and other fevers in 10 minutes.
When diagnosing a case of Ebola, time is of the essence. However, existing diagnostic tests take at least a day or two to yield results, preventing health care workers from quickly determining whether a patient needs immediate treatment and isolation.
The new device, a simple paper strip similar to a pregnancy test, can rapidly diagnose Ebola, as well as other viral hemorrhagic fevers such as yellow fever and dengue fever.
Unlike most existing paper diagnostics, which test for only one disease, the new MIT strips are color-coded so they can be used to distinguish among several diseases. To achieve that, the researchers used triangular nanoparticles, made of silver, which can take on different colors depending on their size.
"When we run a patient sample through the strip, if you see an orange band you know they have yellow fever, if it shows up as a red band you know they have Ebola, and if it shows up green then we know that they have dengue," said Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, a visiting scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the technical staff at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.
The researchers hope to obtain the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to begin using the device in areas where the Ebola outbreak is still ongoing.
The article was prepared by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published by the Lab on a Chip journal.
AB/IINA
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