Scientists at the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing in China have developed a technology to quickly identify a blood sample’s blood type.
According to a Medgadget report it relies on using antibodies that target A and B antigens that give blood its type, and a dye that is activated when the antibodies are in attack mode. The same was done for the D antigen, which gives the plus or minus to the blood type.
The sample is placed on a plate with a combination of antibody and dye, and the color of the plate changes depending on if a reaction is occurring. It stays brown if nothing is happening.
A single test takes only 30 seconds to provide a result, which can be highly useful in emergency situations in which transfusion needs to be initiated as soon as possible. The team tested the technique on over 3,000 known blood samples, demonstrating an accuracy of 99.9%.
Abstract
Fast and simultaneous forward and reverse blood grouping has long remained elusive. Forward blood grouping detects antigens on red blood cells, whereas reverse grouping identifies specific antibodies present in plasma. We developed a paper-based assay using immobilized antibodies and bromocresol green dye for rapid and reliable blood grouping, where dye-assisted color changes corresponding to distinct blood components provide a visual readout. ABO antigens and five major Rhesus antigens could be detected within 30 s, and simultaneous forward and reverse ABO blood grouping using small volumes (100 μl) of whole blood was achieved within 2 min through on-chip plasma separation without centrifugation. A machine-learning method was developed to classify the spectral plots corresponding to dye-based color changes, which enabled reproducible automatic grouping. Using optimized operating parameters, the dye-assisted paper assay exhibited comparable accuracy and reproducibility to the classical gel-card assays in grouping 3550 human blood samples. When translated to the assembly line and low-cost manufacturing, the proposed approach may be developed into a cost-effective and robust universal blood-grouping platform.
Authors
Hong Zhang, Xiaopei Qiu, Yurui Zou, Yanyao Ye, Chao Qi, Lingyun Zou, Xiang Yang, Ke Yang, Yuanfeng Zhu, Yongjun Yang, Yang Zhou, Yang Luo
[link url="http://www.medgadget.com/2017/03/new-test-identifies-blood-type-seconds.html"]Medgadget report[/link]
[link url="http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/381/eaaf9209.full"]Science Translational Medicine abstract[/link]