Search

Nowadays, food safety has become a major concern for the sustainability of global public health. Through the production and distribution steps, food can be contaminated by either chemical hazards or pathogens, and the determination of these plays a critical role in the processes of ensuring food safety. Therefore, the development of analytical tools that can provide rapid screening of these hazards is highly necessary. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) have advanced significantly in recent years as they are rapid and low-cost analytical screening tools for testing contaminated food products. This review focuses on recent developments of µPADs for various applications in the food safety field. A description of the fabrication of selected papers is briefly discussed, and evaluation of the μPADs' performance with regard to their precision and accuracy as well as their limits of detection is critically assessed. The advantages and disadvantages of these devices are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a portable device for blood detection as well as blood typing assay, using a microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) which proves to be sensitive, cost-effective, user-friendly and field-appropriate. A different patterned µPAD was fabricated using wax and a laser printer for detection of blood and ABO and Rh blood typing. Five different blood detection tests and two blood typing systems, i.e. ABO and Rh, were performed within minutes without following any complex protocol and were simple to infer. The performance of this hand-held μPAD proves it to be a reliable alternative to lab-based tests, at a fraction of the cost and with simplicity. The developed μPAD provides on-site blood detection as well as blood typing, which proves to be a reasonable and very useful add-on to conventional forensic and clinical investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A colorimetric sensing strategy employing gold nanoparticles and a paper assay platform has been developed for tuberculosis diagnosis. Unmodified gold nanoparticles and single-stranded detection oligonucleotides are used to achieve rapid diagnosis without complicated and time-consuming thiolated or other surface-modified probe preparation processes. To eliminate the use of sophisticated equipment for data analysis, the color variance for multiple detection results was simultaneously collected and concentrated on cellulose paper with the data readout transmitted for cloud computing via a smartphone. The results show that the 2.6 nM tuberculosis mycobacterium target sequences extracted from patients can easily be detected, and the turnaround time after the human DNA is extracted from clinical samples was approximately 1 h. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]