Abstract
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder that affects more than 300 million people worldwide. Asthma management would benefit from additional tools that establish biomarkers to identify phenotypes of asthma. We present a microfluidic solution that discriminates asthma from allergic rhinitis based on a patient's neutrophil chemotactic function. The handheld diagnostic device sorts neutrophils from whole blood within 5 min, and generates a gradient of chemoattractant in the microchannels by placing a lid with chemoattractant onto the base of the device. This technology was used in a clinical setting to assay 34 asthmatic (n = 23) and nonasthmatic, allergic rhinitis (n = 11) patients to establish domains for asthma diagnosis based on neutrophil chemotaxis. We determined that neutrophils from asthmatic patients migrate significantly more slowly toward the chemoattractant compared with nonasthmatic patients (P = 0.002). Analysis of the receiver operator characteristics of the patient data revealed that using a chemotaxis velocity of 1.55 μm/min for asthma yields a diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of 96% and 73%, respectively. This study identifies neutrophil chemotaxis velocity as a potential biomarker for asthma, andwe demonstrate a microfluidic technology that was used in a clinical setting to perform these measurements.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 5813-5818 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 111 |
Issue number | 16 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 22 2014 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Diagnostics
- KOALA
- Microfluidics
- Passive pumping