Abstract
We present a high resolution, ultra-frugal printing of paper microfluidicdevices using in-house paraffin formulation on a simple filter paper. The patternsprinted using an office inkjet printer formed a selective hydrophobic barrier of4 ± 1 µm thickness with a hydrophilic channel width of 275 µm. These printed patternseffectively confine common aqueous solutions and solvents, which was verified by solventcompatibility studies. SEM analysis reveals that the solvent confinement is due to poreblockage in the filter paper. The fabricated paper-based device was validated forqualitative assessment of Candida albicans(pathogenic fungi) by using a combination of L-proline β-naphthylamide as the substrateand cinnamaldehyde as an indicator. Our studies reveal that the pathogenic fungi can bedetected within 10 min with the limit of detection (LOD) of0.86 × 106 cfu/mL. Owing to its simplicity, this facilemethod shows high potential and can be scaled up for developing robust paper-baseddevices for biomarker detection in resource-limited settings.Graphic abstract
Highlights
Most often, the presence of microbial pathogens inside and around humans has been shown to have detrimental effects on their health, which ranges from mild infections all the way up to lethal diseases (Savary et al 2019; Chow et al 2010)
To authenticate the functionality of the printed paperbased device for point-of-care diagnostics, we focused on leveraging the device for the detection of Candida albicans, a major opportunistic fungal pathogen causing invasive candidiasis among immunocompromised hosts (Mayer et al 2013; Kullberg and Arendrup 2015; Clancy and Nguyen 2018)
In this work, we have described the development of a cost-effective (\ 0.20 $) paperbased device leveraged for point-of-care detection of pathological fungi
Summary
The presence of microbial pathogens (including bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites) inside and around humans has been shown to have detrimental effects on their health, which ranges from mild infections all the way up to lethal diseases (Savary et al 2019; Chow et al 2010). Pathogen detection is more imperative than ever and is readily employed in wide-spread areas like food testing (Priyanka et al 2016), environmental monitoring (Rajapaksha et al 2019) and clinical diagnosis (Lazcka et al 2007). Recent times have seen a steady increase in antimicrobial resistance and delayed disease detection which has become a bludgeoning problem among patient care and hospital settings (Prestinaci et al 2015). Conventional and frugal ways of detecting causative pathogens mainly rely on culture-based methods, where the samples are isolated and grown in a suitable media. The cultured samples are subjected to microscopic examination, biochemical testing and chromogenic media for detection (Wormser and Ryan 2003; Law et al 2014; Prestinaci et al 2015; Varadi et al 2017). This, eventually results in delayed detection as well as targeted therapy (Wang and Salazar 2016; Goluch 2017)
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