title: A versatile PDMS/paper hybrid microfluidic platform for sensitive infectious disease diagnosis.
abstract: Bacterial meningitis is a serious health concern worldwide. Given that meningitis can be fatal and many meningitis cases occurred in high-poverty areas, a simple, low-cost, highly sensitive method is in great need for immediate and early diagnosis of meningitis. Herein, we report a versatile and cost-effective polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/paper hybrid microfluidic device integrated with loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for the rapid, sensitive, and instrument-free detection of the main meningitis-causing bacteria, Neisseria meningitidis (N. meningitidis). The introduction of paper into the microfluidic device for LAMP reactions enables stable test results over a much longer period of time than a paper-free microfluidic system. This hybrid system also offers versatile functions, by providing not only on-site qualitative diagnostic analysis (i.e., a yes or no answer), but also confirmatory testing and quantitative analysis in laboratory settings. The limit of detection of N. meningitidis is about 3 copies per LAMP zone within 45 min, close to single-bacterium detection sensitivity. In addition, we have achieved simple pathogenic microorganism detection without a laborious sample preparation process and without the use of centrifuges. This low-cost hybrid microfluidic system provides a simple and highly sensitive approach for fast instrument-free diagnosis of N. meningitidis in resource-limited settings. This versatile PDMS/paper microfluidic platform has great potential for the point of care (POC) diagnosis of a wide range of infectious diseases, especially for developing nations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, ‡College of Health Sciences, §Biomedical Engineering, and ∥Border Biomedical Research Center, University of Texas at El Paso , 500 West University Avenue, El Paso, Texas 79968, United States.
authors.forename: Maowei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dou
authors.forename: Delfina C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Dominguez
authors.forename: XiuJun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sanchez
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scott
mesh_terms: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D056656:Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; D016920:Meningitis, Bacterial / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000382:microbiology; D044085:Microfluidics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009345:Neisseria meningitidis / Q000302:isolation & purification; D010209:Paper; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; C013830:baysilon