A breakthrough at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) means a brighter future for diabetics. Scientists at the school have developed a new kit that will allow doctors to find out within minutes if diabetic patients are suffering from inflammation.
As a consequence patients will no longer have to wait several hours for the results obtained from the conventional full blood count test. And patients will no longer have to supply a full vial of blood to determine whether they are suffering from inflammation caused by immune cell activation. Instead, the new in test kit requires only a drop of blood.
Even better, the kit may also see the price of such tests becoming more affordable as the kit costs less than a dollar to produce.
When diabetic patients are grouped based on their inflammation status as well as their glucose level, health care providers can better assess a treatment that is best suited for their patients.
A senior researcher from NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Dr. Hou Han Wei, invented the new chip that forms the key component of the test kit. “By designing very tiny channels on our chip, we are able to physically separate the various blood cells by size into different outlets, like a coin sorting machine,” explained the inventor.
A significant part of our body’s immune system are white blood cells and a key type is known as neutrophils, which is the first line of defence whenever an infection or inflammation strikes the body.
In a healthy person, neutrophils are able to float free in the blood stream. But when there is an acute inflammation such as during a bacterial or viral infection, they lose their speed and roll along the vessel walls. Once near the site of infection, they squeeze through the vessel walls and move to the site of the injury.
Looking to the future, Dr Hou plans to conduct a bigger study of the device’s capabilities to treat patients and impact treatment based on the rolling speed of neutrophils.
