Portable device delivers rapid testing for mosquito-borne viruses

With a lot of ingenuity, some creative engineering and a few off-the-shelf items, a University of Florida team led by a virologist and an engineer have created an inexpensive, quick and accurate handheld device that can detect seven mosquito-borne illnesses.

Their design could help clinicians in low-resource or remote settings — from clinics in rural Haiti to farm animal veterinarians — diagnose patients without the need for a power supply, bulky equipment or extensive training.

John Lednicky, Ph.D., a virologist in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions whose interests include mosquito-borne viruses, Z. Hugh Fan, Ph.D., a mechanical/biomedical engineer in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, and colleagues describe the device’s development in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

“We wanted to create a diagnostic test that could distinguish between viruses that was relatively quick, cheap and didn’t require expensive instrumentation or a lot of training,” said Lednicky, a research professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health.