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A new protocol detects RNA viruses such as Zika and hepatitis C without traditional medical laboratory equipment. Requiring only a handheld reader and a portable heater, it has the potential to bring rapid testing to low-income regions where low accessibility and availability often hinder time-sensitive diagnoses and treatments.

A team of researchers in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Grainger College of Engineering developed the testing protocol for detecting viral RNA directly in whole blood with no laboratory purification. As reported in the journal Science Advances, the protocol uses heat to dry the blood sample before amplifying the preserved viral RNA and detecting it through fluorescence. The entire protocol can be completed on site in a matter of hours, promising a clear advantage in treating diseases such as Zika virus and hepatitis C where early detection is vital to effective treatment.

"Medical infrastructure is currently organized around standard-of-care testing, where samples are collected then transported to a laboratory where time-consuming processing is performed using sophisticated equipment," said the study's lead author, Jongwon Lim, a former postdoctoral researcher with Illinois Grainger Engineering and current postdoctoral researcher with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

"We want to shift that to point-of-care testing, where the processing is performed where the sample is collected. The main paradigm has been to replicate laboratory approaches at the point of care, but this comes at the cost of reduced sensitivity.

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