Biological and technical factors affecting the point-of-care diagnostics in not-oncological chronic diseases

Inexpensive point-of-care (POC) analytical solutions have the potential to allow the implementation of large-scale screening campaigns aimed at identifying the initial stages of pathologies in the population, reducing morbidity, mortality and, indirectly, also the costs for the healthcare system. At global level, the most common preventive screening schemes address some cancer pathologies or are used to monitor the spread of some infective diseases. However, systematic testing might become decisive to improve the care response even in the case of chronic pathologies and, in this review, we analyzed the state-of-the-art of the POC diagnostics for Chronic Kidney Disease, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Multiple Sclerosis. The different technological options used to manufacture the biosensors and evaluate the produced data have been described and this information has been integrated with the present knowledge relatively to the biomarkers that have been proposed to monitor such diseases, namely their availability and reliability. Finally, the nature of the macromolecules used to capture the biomarkers has been discussed in relation to the biomarker nature.