Abstract
Food safety is of obvious importance, but there are frequent problems caused by foodborne pathogens that threaten the safety and health of human beings worldwide. Although the most classic method for detecting bacteria is the plate counting method, it takes almost three to seven days to get the bacterial results for the detection. Additionally, there are many existing technologies for accurate determination of pathogens, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), or loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), but they are not suitable for timely and rapid on-site detection due to time-consuming pretreatment, complex operations and false positive results. Therefore, an urgent goal remains to determine how to quickly and effectively prevent and control the occurrence of foodborne diseases that are harmful to humans. As an alternative, microfluidic devices with miniaturization, portability and low cost have been introduced for pathogen detection. In particular, the use of microfluidic technologies is a promising direction of research for this purpose. Herein, this article systematically reviews the use of microfluidic technology for the rapid and sensitive detection of foodborne pathogens. First, microfluidic technology is introduced, including the basic concepts, background, and the pros and cons of different starting materials for specific applications. Next, the applications and problems of microfluidics for the detection of pathogens are discussed. The current status and different applications of microfluidic-based technologies to distinguish and identify foodborne pathogens are described in detail. Finally, future trends of microfluidics in food safety are discussed to provide the necessary foundation for future research efforts.
Highlights
With the rapid development of the economy and the continuous improvement of living conditions, people today are paying more and more attention to health issues
Compared to traditional methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), enzyme-linked immunosorbent or DNA probes, microfluidic devices allow for a flexible combination of multiple operating units and overall controllability, so some steps such as sample pretreatment, mixing or reaction can be integrated into a single chip
Food safety is closely related to human health, powerful, sensitive and effective tools are needed to ensure food safety, such as the detection of foodborne pathogens
Summary
With the rapid development of the economy and the continuous improvement of living conditions, people today are paying more and more attention to health issues. According to the statistics of Parisi et al a quarter of the world’s people are at higher risk of foodborne illnesses due to the current inefficient detection technology of bacteria, the imperfect food supervision system and high-speed economic development [4]. In order to reduce the costs and improve the portability of detection, high-performance materials such as paper-based microfluidic chips have been applied. Microfluidic devices are simple, automated, and portable miniaturized systems that can perform functions more efficiently and conveniently than the common techniques such as PCR and LAMP [22,23]. There are some reviews on the application of microfluidic chip technology in food safety, their overall systematisms and integrity are not enough.
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