Researchers at the University of Seville (US), in collaboration with the North American of Carolina, have designed and developed a portable microdispositive that analyzes and detects two diabetes markers in less than three minutes.
The device is designed for fluid detection to identify glyd and albumin hemoglobin, those diabetes -related markers.The platform, which is still in a prototype phase, separates and analyzes the sample with greater precision than the current system.
Right now, patients have reactive strips to measure their glucose levels.However, when they require more accurate values, their blood samples are sent to the laboratory.It is at this point where the new device provides its advantages, since it is portable and combines in the same platform multiple functions, such as the treatment of the sample, separation and analysis of online results.These possibilities reduce the time of obtaining results to 2.2 minutes.
The process begins with the preparation of the sample, where a blood microliter is diluted 500 times, is microfiltra, centrifuged and injected into the platform.This is separated by capillary electrophoresis, a method to separate the different substances depending on their load and size.The idea is to differentiate hemoglobin in alpha and beta subunits."Knowing your glycosyled/glucosilated percentages provides the track of the presence or not of diabetes," specifies the US María Ramos Payán researcher, one of the study authors.
After the separation of hemoglobin subunits, they pass to the mass spectrometer that analyzes all the molecules present in a sample.In this way, it detects 1C hemoglobin and glycosylated albumin, an additional marker to control the glycemic state in people with diabetes.
Thus, Ramos says that, although glyd hemoglobin is maintained in the organism 120 days and glyd albumin makes it less time, "both together provide a more complete image of the patient's glucemic profile", which helps them perform "abetter follow -up in patients, to better predict the risk of diabetes and to detect the disease in a faster and more precise way ».
«This exam serves to determine how a person's glycemic profile has been in the last three months.Higher levels between 6.5 and seven percent could be indicative of bad glycemic control and possible presence of the disease, ”says researcher María Ramos Payán.
the only portable method
One of the advances in the study is that it is "the only portable method", which is attached to the mass spectrometer and offers results of two parameters, glyd hemoglobin and glyd albumin, offering more information in a single stage of analysisthan current technologies.«This reduces the costs of instrumentation and the chain of errors, since the process is simplified and time is reduced.Likewise, minimal preparation and manipulation of the sample is required, ”highlights the researcher at the University of Seville María Ramos Payán.
