Measles virus in saliva can be detected through this coin sized device

Researchers have developed a coin sized device capable of detecting measles virus in saliva.

Measles is one of the most infectious airborne viruses worldwide and while and inexpensive and effective vaccine is available developing countries still continue to suffer from sporadic outbreaks and this is due to unvaccinated people in these countries.

New research published in Advanced Functional Materials describes a novel point-of-care biosensing device capable of detecting measles virions in human saliva, which may help with efforts to control viral spread. Experiments validated the accuracy of the lab-on-a-chip device, which is smaller than a €1-cent coin or a U.S. quarter. The device may offer a convenient platform for measles diagnosis and serve as a guideline for designing new microfluidic biosensing systems.

According to researchers, their technology has demonstrated for the first time the synergic operation of different surface-acoustic-wave-based micro devices on the same chip, in the context of lab-on-a-chip biosensing. In this way we have been able to drastically improve the detection limit of our sensors, potentially enabling early point-of-care diagnostic applications.

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