Researchers at University of Texas El Paso patented an affordable device that could monitor the health of HIV patients with limited resources and cannot afford the use of machines including flow cytometers.
Flow cytometers and similar devices are part of blood tests HIV patients need for regular health tracking, but they are bulky, powered by electricity and cost at least $50,000.
Thus a team of engineers at the university created a more affordable, battery-operated health tool to serve third-world countries or “areas with limited resources like Africa or Mexico,” reported Thomas Boland, PhD., professor of metallurgical, materials and biomedical engineering who co-invented the device with Julio Rincon, biomedical engineer and doctorate student, and Silvia Natividad, former master's student.
Boland said there is a lack of infrastructure in certain areas to perform the important HIV lab tests, explaining that their device can bridge the current gap in a quick, cheap way such that HIV patients can easily go to doctors’ offices for regular check-up.
The low-cost printer helps healthcare providers count the body’s number of CD4 cells, which the HIV virus attacks. HIV lessens the amount of these cells in a patient’s body, and when the cell count becomes critically low it means the HIV case is progressing into AIDS and therefore requires ramping up treatment.
Post-drawing of blood from patients, clinicians start to mix in magnetic microscale beads latching onto the blood’s CD4 cells. The mixture is then put into an inkjet printer modified for printing out cells. The cells are released in a horizontal way – instead of vertically like how printers process sheets of papers – onto a magnetized microscopic slide.
CD4 cells attach to the slide, unlike other cells that dribble down into an extra container. Healthcare providers counts the CD4 cell count under a microscope – a process that lasts as little as 20 minutes.
Targeting HIV patients with limited resources and access to flow cytometers, the team aims to license the technology it developed to a company willing to produce the device commercially. A number of Mexican doctors have shown interest in adopting the device, shared Boland.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), about 35 million worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS in 2013, with 3.2 million of them children or below 15 years old. The vast majority of them hail from low or middle income countries, sub-Saharan African being most affected with 24.7 million patients.
