Acoustic probing of new biomarkers for rapid sickle cell disease screening

Sickle cell disease (SCD) remains a critical global health issue, with high child mortality in low-resource regions. Early diagnosis is essential for improving health outcomes, but conventional diagnostic methods are unsuitable for widespread use due to the high costs of laboratory equipment. There is an urgent need for portable, cost-effective, and user-friendly point-of-care diagnostic tools that can quickly assess blood health. Here, we explore two new biomarkers enabled by acoustic probing for rapid SCD diagnosis: cell membrane stability from measuring red blood cell (RBC) lysis temperature in whole blood, and plasma protein concentration from measuring relative protein precipitation in blood plasma. Both biomarkers effectively differentiate healthy HbAA samples from pre-/no transfusion HbSS samples with high accuracy. Additionally, the RBC lysis biomarker can distinguish post-transfusion exchange HbSS samples with a lower percentage of sickled cells, indicating the potential to diagnose milder forms of SCD as well as sickle cell trait.