More often than now, a blood sample is required when it comes to diagnosing a slew of diseases, and I would like to think that this is a necessary evil. After all, being jabbed with a needle is not everyone’s cup of tea for sure, and children are not the only ones averse to this. In addition, obtaining blood samples would require the presence of trained staff in the vicinity, which can be a rare commodity in underdeveloped nations. A bunch of Australian researchers with Simon R. Corrie of the University of Queensland at the helm have come up with a skin patch which could soon open the doors to an easier and pain-free method of obtaining blood samples to diagnose a particular medical condition.
Patches in the past which penetrate the skin to pick up a unique biomarker have been around for some time, but they tend to see limited use without being able to offer a confirmed diagnosis. There is this new patch, however, that can test for a couple of protein biomarkers simultaneously, and in lab tests involving malarial mice, it could detect recombinant P. falciparum rPfHRP2 and total IgG, which are biomarkers for the disease. Apart form that, the microneedles in the patch will penetrate into the intradermal layer of the skin, and it carries antibodies for the target biomarkers which are attached to them.
The researchers have come to a conclusion that “such devices can be used to capture clinically relevant, circulating protein biomarkers of infectious disease via the skin, with potential applications as a minimally invasive and lab-free biomarker detection platform.”
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