One of the biggest problems in controlling pandemics is working out exactly how far they’ve actually spread. Determining who has got bird flu, SARS, or the latest disease-du-jour is vital. So a new handheld disease detector that can quickly sort the infected from those with colds, flu or plain hypochondria is potentially hugely important (AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg).

Researchers in Singapore have developed a ‘mini-lab’ that can identify H5N1 (bird flu) in under half an hour, compared to several hours for existing methods (AFP). The new test is also cheaper. “Compared to commercially available tests, the bioassay is equally sensitive and is 440% faster and 2,000–5,000% cheaper,” the researchers say in their paper in our sister publication Nature Medicine (abstract).

A throat-swab from a potentially infected individual is combined with magnetic particles. A liquid drop containing the sample is then manipulated using magnetic forces to separate out viral RNA. This is then isolated, purified and concentrated before being analyzed. “The novelty of our method lies in the way that the droplet itself becomes a pump, valve, mixer, solid-phase extractor and real-time thermocycler. Complex biochemical tasks can thus be processed in a fashion similar to that of a traditional biological laboratory on a miniature scale,” said study author Juergen Pipper of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore (press release pdf).

Image: IBN