During the COVID-19 pandemic, whenever we had to do mandatory checks to see if we contracted the virus or not, we had to go to the local health center, queue up in a long line, and once it was our turn, a medical professional would stick a swab up our nose to collect some samples, mix it with some solution, and wait for the results to see if we were positive or not. It was so tedious.
A couple years in, they released these self-testing kits which can be done at home. We just needed to buy one at a local pharmacy and conduct the test ourselves at the comforts of our own home, and then, we can simply send the results to whoever required them. I helped a friend conduct that self-test kit, and I was pleasantly surprised at how convenient it was.
Now, imagine having a disposable self-testing kit for something like cardiovascular diseases readily available at home. That would save anyone the time that they would take to get an appointment and travel to the hospital twice a year to get their heart health checked.
Currently, researchers from Colorado State University are working on a saliva test kit which allows one to check whether they are prone to heart failure. With this device, users will be able to find out the results as quickly as 15 minutes after the test was administered.
Similar to how the COVID self-test kits made it more accessible and convenient for people to check if they are COVID positive or not, this saliva test may actually help save lives and prevent heart failure at the earliest stages.
The most reliable method being used right now to check for signs or symptoms of heart failure is a blood test which measures B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), which signals heart stress. On the other hand, this new device, called the electrochemical capillary-driven immunoassay (eCaDI), uses a biosensor to detect two biomarkers, Galectin-3 and S100A7, proven to have correlation with heart failure.
The researchers say that each eCaDI device costs about $3 to make, and the team can make about five devices in 20 to 30 minutes, because of how easy it is to assemble. It's basically just five layers, three of which are transparent, flexible plastic, with two layers of double-sided adhesive in between.
Saliva testing may not just be for detecting heart failure. With further improvements, the researchers may be able to develop reliable, non-invasive biosensors for other diseases as well.
Surely, if this new technology is mass-produced, it can help people who have no access to healthcare by giving them an affordable way of detecting any underlying conditions that they may have. Hopefully, this research gets all the funding that it needs and all the support for production and distribution as the benefits that it brings to the general public can be game-changing.
(Image credit: Trey Pittman)
Also: have you seen that there is a woman who can smell Parkinson's? She passes tests on jumpers known suffers have worn and all! .. apparently it helped scientists to develop a swab test a couple of years ago, but I have yet to see or hear much about use.