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The home heart attack detector provides results in minutes, eliminating the need to wait for hours. Discover how this technology can revolutionize healthcare and save lives in critical situations!
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have developed a revolutionary chip that promises to detect heart attack biomarkers in a matter of minutes, a significant advance over current methods that can take hours to provide results.
The device, which can become a hardware diagnostic for home use, stands out for its high accuracy, even in very low concentrations of biomarkers such as the enzyme creatine kinase and the protein troponin, responsible for indicating damage to the heart muscle.
When it comes to heart attacks, time is of the essence. The sooner the diagnosis, the sooner blood flow can be restored to the heart, minimizing damage to the organ and increasing the patient’s chances of recovery. However, the symptoms of a heart attack can vary significantly between patients, making early diagnosis a real challenge.
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Zheng and others 2024
Currently, when a person arrives at an emergency room with a suspected heart attack, they undergo a series of blood tests, such as the aforementioned biomarkers. The problem is that these tests can take one to two hours to process in laboratory.
With the new chip, this wait can be drastically reduced to just a few minutes, which can save lives in emergency situations.
Cutting-edge technology for rapid diagnostics
The technology behind the chip developed by JHU is extremely innovative. The device uses a unique “metasurface” to detect infarction biomarkers quickly and accurately.
The process involves creating a layer of polystyrene spheres arranged in a hexagonal pattern on a quartz base. Thin layers of gold and silica are then applied over the spheres, filling in the gaps. After the spheres are removed, a stacked structure of gold and silica atoms remains, which amplifies the chip's electric and magnetic fields.
This amplification allows the device to use Raman spectroscopy, a chemical analysis technique that uses light to interact with the chemical bonds present in a blood sample, facilitating the detection of biomarkers.
“The chip detected biomarkers of heart attack within seconds, even at extremely low concentrations,” said Peng Zheng, lead author of the study and an assistant research scientist at JHU. He also noted that the device can detect signs of a heart attack even before conventional tests.
Biomedical engineer Ishan Barman, a co-author of the study, stressed the chip’s potential for out-of-hospital diagnostics. “We’re talking about speed, accuracy and the ability to take measurements outside of a hospital,” Barman said. He also mentioned that in the future, the chip could evolve into a portable device, similar to the “tricorder” from Star Trek, allowing for rapid diagnostics with just a drop of blood.
In addition to detecting heart attacks, the researchers believe the technology could be adapted to diagnose other diseases, such as cancer and infections. “There is enormous commercial potential for this technology platform,” Barman said.
