Revolutionizing Healthcare With Paper-Based Nucleic Acid Testing

The rapid and accurate identification of nucleic acids (NAs) is essential to early diagnosis and treatment of disease in healthcare. Paper-based analytical devices (PADs) offer a preferred alternative to laborious, expensive, and time-consuming conventional nucleic acid testing (NAT) methods with considerable success. However, their development has been constrained by challenges in NA recognition and signal amplification within a restricted paper fiber network. Recently developed PADs, which establish a three-dimensional environment for NA reactions by the integration of porous fibers and modified substrate materials, are limited by the precision of base identification and user convenience. In this review, we focus on paper-based analytical devices with enhanced point-of-care applicability for NA detection and discuss the strategies for enhanced NA cascade signal amplification and background noise suppression. Emphasis is placed on the integrated detection of NA molecules from input to output, highlighting the effective signal amplification and rapid signal output of low-concentration NA molecules of the paper-based assay in complicated detection systems.