AsianScientist (Oct. 5, 2016) – Scientists from Singapore have developed a new kit that will allow doctors to find out if diabetic patients are suffering from inflammation in a matter of minutes. Their findings were published in Scientific Reports.
Singapore has the second-highest proportion of diabetics among developed nations at 10.53 percent, as reported by International Diabetes Federation. Type 2 diabetes is the most common and is usually treated with lifestyle changes, medication and insulin. If diabetic patients can be grouped based on their inflammation status in addition to glucose level, then doctors can better choose the treatment best suited for their patients.
Current procedures require patients to wait for several hours for the results obtained from the conventional full blood count test. In conventional procedures, blood cells need to be physically separated for analyzing, which is time-consuming and laborious. The new test kit, incorporating a chip invented by Nanyang Technological University senior research fellow Dr. Hou Han Wei, does this automatically.
The new test kit, which costs less than a dollar to produce, only needs a drop of blood to test if a patient is suffering from inflammation. White blood cells form a significant part of our body’s immune system and a key type, known as neutrophils, is the first line of defense whenever infection or inflammation strikes. The test kit extracts neutrophils and measures their rolling behavior as a biomarker to determine if the diabetic patient is suffering from inflammation.
“Analyzing these separated neutrophils could help indicate how bad an inflammation is and if there is an increased risk of infection for diabetic patients,” said Hou.
Moving forward, Hou plans to team up with clinician-scientists at the medical school as well as at Tan Tock Seng Hospital to conduct a bigger study of the device’s use when treating patients.
The article can be found at: Hou et al. (2016) Rapid and Label-free Microfluidic Neutrophil Purification and Phenotyping in Diabetes Mellitus.
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Source: Nanyang Technological University.
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