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Published on: April 16, 2016
Microfluidic Chip with Integrated Whole Blood Separation for Simultaneous Accurate Quantification of Multiple Chronic
Jing Yang1, Xiaoye Feng2, Haiqin Li1
1Institute of Biomedical Precision Testing and Instrumentation, College of Artificial Intelligence, Taiyuan University of Technology, Jinzhong, Shanxi 030600, China.
Insights
A new smartphone-based microfluidic system enables direct, at-home quantification of chronic kidney disease (CKD) biomarkers from fingertip blood. This technology offers accurate, rapid, and cost-effective monitoring for early CKD detection and management.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Point-of-Care Diagnostics
- Microfluidics
Background:
- Chronic kidney disease (CKD) poses a significant public health challenge, necessitating improved home monitoring for early diagnosis and management.
- Current methods for detecting CKD biomarkers in whole blood are limited by complex preprocessing steps like centrifugation, hindering real-time, at-home applications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a novel smartphone-assisted microfluidic point-of-care testing (POCT) system for direct quantification of CKD biomarkers from whole blood.
- To enable accurate measurement of uric acid (UA), creatinine (CR), and albumin (Alb) using minimal sample volume for at-home healthcare.
Main Methods:
- A microfluidic chip with a vertical flow module was designed for rapid plasma separation from 30 μL of whole blood.
- A smartphone application was developed for automated image recognition and processing to quantify biomarker concentrations.
- The system was validated using clinical whole blood samples and compared against a standard clinical analyzer.
Main Results:
- The system achieved sensitive detection limits for UA (0.1127 mmol/L), CR (0.2978 μmol/L), and Alb (0.7696 mg/mL), meeting clinical standards.
- Quantitative analysis of 83 clinical samples demonstrated high consistency with results from a Beckman AU 5400 clinical analyzer.
- The developed smartphone app facilitated automated data processing for user-friendly at-home monitoring.
Conclusions:
- The proposed smartphone-assisted microfluidic POCT system provides a simple, accurate, rapid, and cost-effective method for CKD biomarker detection directly from whole blood.
- This technology holds significant potential for improving early CKD screening, real-time monitoring, and enhancing patient self-management at home.
Abstract:
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has become a public health burden, with a high mortality rate and a trend toward youthfulness. It is imperative to develop a home monitoring system for the early diagnosis and long-term monitoring of CKD serum biomarkers. However, due to the limitations of conventional centrifugation preprocessing of whole blood samples, the real-time detection platform cannot fully meet the requirement of obtaining quantitative results directly from whole blood. Herein, a novel smartphone-assisted microfluidic chip integration of a whole blood separation point-of-care testing (POCT) system was proposed to achieve accurate quantification of CKD biomarkers uric acid (UA), creatinine (CR), and albumin (Alb) based on 30 μL of whole blood (fingertip blood). The whole blood separation module allows rapid separation of plasma from whole blood samples by vertical flow. A smartphone App for automated image recognition and processing was developed, which was applied for at-home routine healthcare. The detection limits of UA, CR, and Alb were 0.1127 mmol/L, 0.2978 μmol/L, and 0.7696 mg/mL, respectively, meeting clinical requirements. Additionally, the quantitative performance of 83 clinical whole blood samples showed high consistency with the clinical analyzer (Beckman AU 5400 automatic biochemical analyzer). This system is simple to operate and user-friendly, providing an accurate, rapid, cost-effective, and reliable detection method for the early screening and real-time monitoring of CKD, which holds significant potential in enhancing home self-management of CKD.
