New technology for diagnosing immunity to Ebola

A promising new approach to detect immunity to Ebola virus infection has been developed by researchers from i-sense in a collaboration between UCL and Imperial College London. Published in ACS Nano , the new approach uses lateral flow technology, similar to that of a pregnancy test, coupled with smartphones to provide a promising alternative to lab-based testing. "This research represents a major milestone for i-sense and harnesses the power of mobile phones and paper microfluidic tests to rapidly analyse a patient's immune response to Ebola with geo-located information to map disease 'hotspots' in Uganda," said Professor Rachel McKendry, Professor of Biomedical Nanotechnology at UCL and Director of i-sense. Since the major Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, a wide number of diagnostic tools have been developed to allow rapid diagnosis of patients, however detection of antibodies is still performed using expensive, time consuming lab-based equipment. During this outbreak, nearly 29,000 people were infected and there were more than 11,000 fatalities, yet limitations in available diagnostic and prognostic tests meant that less than 60 per cent of cases were diagnosed.