A point-of-care microfluidic biochip for quantification of CD64 expression from whole blood for sepsis stratification

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 15949
• Main Authors: Hassan, U., Ghonge, T., Reddy Jr, B., Patel, M., Rappleye, M., Taneja, I., Tanna, A., Healey, R., Manusry, N., Price, Z., Jensen, T., Berger, J., Hasnain, A., Flaugher, E., Liu, S., Davis, B., Kumar, J., White, K., Bashir, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 03-07-2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 13/31; 13/56; 13/62; 631/61/350/59; 9/10; Biochips; Biomarkers - blood; Blood; Correlation analysis; Costs; Diagnosis; Electronic medical records; Flow Cytometry; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Leukocyte Count; Leukocytes; Leukocytes (neutrophilic); Medical electronics; Microfluidics; Microfluidics - instrumentation; Microfluidics - methods; multidisciplinary; Neutrophils - cytology; Point-of-Care Systems; Receptors, IgG - blood; Receptors, IgG - genetics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sensitivity and Specificity; Sepsis; Sepsis - blood; Sepsis - diagnosis; Sepsis - genetics
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15949

Sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication of an infection, has the highest burden of death and medical expenses in hospitals worldwide. Leukocyte count and CD64 expression on neutrophils (nCD64) are known to correlate strongly with improved sensitivity and specificity of sepsis diagnosis at its onset. A major challenge is the lack of a rapid and accurate point-of-care (PoC) device that can perform these measurements from a minute blood sample. Here, we report a PoC microfluidic biochip to enumerate leukocytes and quantify nCD64 levels from 10 μl of whole blood without any manual processing. Biochip measurements have shown excellent correlation with the results from flow cytometer. In clinical studies, we have used PoC biochip to monitor leukocyte counts and nCD64 levels from patients’ blood at different times of their stay in the hospital. Furthermore, we have shown the biochip’s utility for improved sepsis diagnosis by combining these measurements with electronic medical record (EMR).
Sepsis is a potentially life–threatening complication of infection and diagnosis depends on rapid assessment of leukocyte count and CD64 expression. Here the authors present a microfluidic chip that can quantify these parameters from minimal amounts of whole blood with no manual processing.