Test Measles With The New Device
Test Measles With The New Device: Measles is a childhood infection caused by a virus. Once quite common, measles can now almost always be prevented with a vaccine. The signs and symptoms of measles include cough, runny nose, inflamed eyes, sore throat, fever and a red, blotchy skin rash. As per study that appeared in the April 25th edition of the journal Science Transnational Medicine, Measles that kills about 134,000 children per year, and rubella causes some 100,000 children to be born with birth defects such as deafness can now be early tested with a new device.
Researchers invented the device about the size of a toaster oven and uses “lab-on-a-chip” technology made with inkjet printers to manipulate blood samples.
With this device a person’s vulnerability to infectious diseases like measles can be warned. It kills tens of thousands of people each year, mainly in developing countries. The test, called the Measles-Rubella Box (MR Box), uses a finger-prick volume of blood to detect the presence of antibodies against measles and rubella in only 35 minutes.
With a good ability to determine whether a person was at risk for measles and rubella infection, this is done by detecting whether a person had antibodies to either measles or rubella in their body, either from a prior infection of measles and rubella or from being vaccinated.
The cost per micro-fluid cartridge was about $6 at the time of the field study in 2016, but technological advances have lowered it to about $1 or less.
Researchers hope the device will be useful in remote settings or places where people are at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases and other illnesses.
This technology is more useful where people are displaced by humanitarian emergencies, for example, with the forced displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Populations who are displaced by humanitarian emergencies are susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases because they often have low vaccination coverage and suffer from overcrowding and malnutrition.
A professor at the University of Toronto, revealed that his lab is currently working on a similar lab-on-a-chip test for malaria and other tests for Zika virus.
So check if this device is available in your area and get your child test to identify the risk of measles presence in the body.
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