Microfluidics- a Ten Minute Blood Test

Blood tests require a long time to come by and till then you have nothing to do except only waiting. This waiting period varies from one test category to the other due to varied complexities of processes of tests. Scientific researches have done a marvelous thing for heart patients and cancer sufferers with the introduction of "A ten-minute blood test " method to measure proteins in the blood toaid doctors establish cancer risk of patients and scrutinize the health of the aged suffering from chronic ailments.

Methods that are employed currently for the testing of proteins in the blood are also expensive and they involve good amount of blood to be taken out from the body of the patient in a regular basis and would take multiple technicians several hours to do the test. It has been observed that the micro fluidic chip completes the same work on a single chip in 10 minutes with just a single drop of blood during clinical trials. Researchers in this profession are keen to develop efficient methods to enable this special diagnostic science to test blood proteins to make it available at more economic price so that most people are benefited from this revolutionary development.

Efforts are being made to commercialize the diagnostic blood chip. Serum protein claims a position in the biology of a disease and is a subject of biotechnology. This method being introduced very recently costs quite a bit and is about $500 to test for one blood protein in USA. Tests require 10 to 15 milliliters of blood and every time which may be a good number of times. They permit doctors to watch more patients regularly and he is able to identify diseases like cancer and take needful remedial measures and advise correct preventives for the care of the aged persons. Microfluidics being a recent extension of biotechnology, the cost incurred in conducting test is on the higher side. But the results are exceptionally accurate and prevent the patient from further deterioration due to early monitoring.

During the process with simple micro fluidics, a drop of blood is drawn in a micro scale channel with the help of external pressure. The primary channel gets divided into narrower ones that eliminate blood cells and acknowledge the protein-rich blood serum like the separation in a centrifuge. The narrower ones are outlined with protein bar codes or DNA type antibodies arresting serum protein of the blood. Bar codes are studied under fluorescent microscope or an instrument, the gene-chip scanner for identification of proteins in red lines.

The quantum of light radiating from a protein point in the bar code provides the amount of its concentration in the blood. The chip is able to measure ordinary blood proteins present as well as rarer proteins derived from brain or other organs and is very much sensitive. This 10 minute blood test can be effectively useful to perform blood tests to establish the threat level of patients with cancer of breast and prostate. The workability of the chip is still being tested by researchers on serious patients as well as on healthy individuals.