Thanks to the appropriate application installed on your smartphone and using a simple laboratory kit, you can detect COVID-19 and the flu within 25 minutes on the basis of a saliva sample. The kit is easy to use and the diagnosis is accurate. The application and methodology are free and available to everyone, reports JAMA Network Open. ”
Both the apparatus and the application were developed by a team of scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. The project was led by Professors Michael Mahan, David Low and Charles Samuel of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and doctors at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
The process, named smart-LAMP, is simple. A small sample of saliva from the patient is collected and analyzed by a smartphone application using a camera built into the phone and a diagnostic kit. No additional specialist materials are required. The app uses your smartphone's camera to evaluate a chemical reaction and makes a diagnosis in 25 minutes - at a fraction of the cost of current diagnostic methods.
Currently, the most reliable are PCR tests - sensitive, accurate, but also quite expensive. In addition, they must be performed in a laboratory and you can wait several hours for the result. LAMP tests are - according to the researchers - equally accurate, and at the same time require much less time and are much cheaper. They can be performed at a clinic and even at home.
The kit needed for this is less than $ 100 - apart from the smartphone, little more than a hob and LED lighting are needed.
"As new COVID variants appear around the world, testing and detection remain essential to pandemic control," said lead author Prof. Michael Mahan. “Almost half of the world's population owns smartphones and we believe this has exciting potential to ensure fair and equal access to precise diagnostic medicine.”
"A key finding was the solution to the LAMP primer-dimer problem - false positives due to high sensitivity - which scientists have been grappling with for over 20 years," explained Heithoff. - It took more than 500 attempts to fix the COVID-19 problem, but the flu viruses were detected on the first attempt. "
"SmaRT-LAMP can detect COVID-19 and can be easily modified to detect new variants and other pathogens with pandemic potential, including influenza," added Prof. Samuel.
The free app has been developed for the Android operating system and is available in the Google Play Store. Once launched, you will see a step-by-step tutorial before running your test samples.
As the authors of this method emphasize, fast and inexpensive testing of vulnerable populations is extremely important, and early detection and quarantine can also reduce the risk of future global epidemics.