Cellphone-sized device quickly detects the Ebola virus

The worst of the recent Ebola epidemic is over, but the threat of future outbreaks lingers. Monitoring the virus requires laboratories with trained personnel, which limits how rapidly tests can be done. Now scientists report in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry a handheld instrument that detects Ebola quickly and could be used in remote locations.

The gold standard method for identifying the Ebola virus in a blood sample requires packaging samples in cooled containers and sending them to specialized laboratories, often far away from where patients live. Lab personnel use a method called reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, to check for the virus. The prolonged testing process delays detection, treatment and real-time monitoring of viral loads in body fluids that can harbor the virus even after it's no longer detected in blood. To make reliable and fast Ebola detection more accessible, Pavel Neuzil and colleagues developed a cellphone-sized device, which they reported in a previous paper.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-cellphone-sized-device-quickly-ebola-virus.html#jCp