A team of researchers has developed a simple and affordable method to detect down to very low levels of norovirus, the cause of gastroenteritis.
The highly infectious norovirus is responsible for more than 20 million cases of food poisoning in the United States each year. Norovirus gastroenteritis is also the most common cause of epidemic gastroenteritis.
The norovirus spreads, among other things, via water supply systems. Worldwide, 200,000 people a year die from contamination with norovirus.
A team of researchers from the University of Arizona therefore sought to develop a method to detect it easily, even at very low levels. Their results were published in the journal ACS Omega.
“Advances in the rapid monitoring of human viruses in water are essential for public health, explains Kelly A. Reynolds, co-author of the study. This rapid and inexpensive method of assessing water quality can be revolutionary in rolling back disease, locally and globally.”
A smartphone and paper
Devices for detecting norovirus already exist but often require a laboratory and several thousand dollar tools. To detect it on a cruise ship or in the municipal hydraulic system, the researchers decided to use a smartphone and paper, based on microfluidic chips.
Simply pour potentially contaminated water over one of the ends of the microfluidic chip-based paper. With the other end, the tester places a fluorescent polystyrene ball. Each bead is linked to an antibody against norovirus. If norovirus is present in the water being tested, several antibodies will attach to the virus particles which will create a small cluster of fluorescent beads.
“The particles of the norovirus are too small to be detected by the microscope of a smartphone, explains Jeong-Yeol Yoon, co-author of the study. But if two or three of these beads come together, it indicates that the norovirus is present, causing the beads to clump together.”
The team hopes to develop methods to detect norovirus infections even earlier in patients and to extend the method to the detection of other particles such as carcinogenic chemicals.
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