Field tested milliliter-scale blood filtration device for point-of-care applications

Max M Gong; Brendan D Macdonald; Trung Vu Nguyen; Kinh Van Nguyen; David Sinton

doi:10.1063/1.4817792

Field tested milliliter-scale blood filtration device for point-of-care applications

Biomicrofluidics. 2013 Aug 5;7(4):44111. doi: 10.1063/1.4817792. eCollection 2013.

Authors

Max M Gong¹, Brendan D Macdonald², Trung Vu Nguyen³, Kinh Van Nguyen⁴, David Sinton¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada.
² Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada.
³ National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, 78 Giai Phong Street, Hanoi, Vietnam ; Department of Microbiology, Hanoi Medical University, 1 Ton That Tung Street, Hanoi, Vietnam ; Department of Clinical Microbiology and Parasitology, Hanoi Medical University, 1 Ton That Tung Street, Hanoi, Vietnam.
⁴ National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, 78 Giai Phong Street, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a low cost and equipment-free blood filtration device capable of producing plasma from blood samples with mL-scale capacity and demonstrate its clinical application for hepatitis B diagnosis. We report the results of in-field testing of the device with 0.8-1 ml of undiluted, anticoagulated human whole blood samples from patients at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam. Blood cell counts demonstrate that the device is capable of filtering out 99.9% of red and 96.9% of white blood cells, and the plasma collected from the device contains lower red blood cell counts than plasma obtained from a centrifuge. Biochemistry and immunology testing establish the suitability of the device as a sample preparation unit for testing alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST), urea, hepatitis B "e" antigen (HBeAg), hepatitis B "e" antibody (HBe Ab), and hepatitis B surface antibody (HBs Ab). The device provides a simple and practical front-end sample processing method for point-of-care microfluidic diagnostics, enabling sufficient volumes for multiplexed downstream tests.