China News Service, Shanghai, February 26 (Liu Yuankang and Xu Jing) It may be possible to early evaluate the risk of Alzheimer's disease with just a urine test strip.
The reporter learned from Donghua University on the 26th that the scientific research team of the School of Biological and Medical Engineering of the school has developed an Alzheimer's disease (AD) early screening kit. You only need to drop urine into the test paper, and 10-15 The disease risk level can be quickly assessed in minutes.
Alzheimer's disease early screening kit.
Photo courtesy of Donghua University
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is commonly known as "dementia". Patients often develop symptoms such as intellectual and cognitive impairment that are irreversible.
At present, the clinical diagnosis of AD is mainly through biomarker detection in cerebrospinal fluid or blood, imaging detection and other methods. Most of the AD is already in the middle and late stages when discovered, which means that the best treatment period has been missed, so early diagnosis is particularly important.
However, cerebrospinal fluid testing requires lumbar puncture, and blood testing is also minimally invasive. Imaging testing is expensive and requires high equipment, making it inconvenient for the elderly to quickly detect or evaluate the risk of AD at home.
The scientific research team of Zhang Yunlong and Chen Ting from the School of Biological and Medical Engineering of Donghua University, who have long been engaged in the research and development of geriatric disease diagnosis and prevention products, began to think: Is there an early screening detection method that is non-invasive, painless, easy to operate, economical, fast and accurate? Etc?
Studies have shown that the levels of neurofilament protein (AD7c-NTP) and phosphorylated Tau protein (p-Tau181) in the urine of patients with Alzheimer's disease are significantly higher than those of normal people.
Based on this, the team tried to achieve early screening and prognosis monitoring of Alzheimer's disease by detecting the concentration levels of two key Alzheimer's disease biomarkers in human urine.
After half a year of experiments, the team used colloidal gold lateral immunochromatography technology and developed this human urine colloidal gold immunochromatography detection kit based on the monoclonal antibody "double-antibody sandwich method". The lower limits can reach 7-17 ng/mL (AD7c-NTP) and 0.107-0.163 μg/mL (p-Tau181) respectively.
Combined with clinical diagnostic analysis indicators, the accuracy rate exceeds 95%.
Alzheimer's disease early screening kit operation process.
Photo courtesy of Donghua University
This test kit consists of test strips, urine collection tubes, urine concentration tubes, etc., and is easy to operate.
Patients only need to drop the collected urine (or urine concentrated to a certain multiple) into the test paper and wait patiently for 10-15 minutes to quickly determine the risk level of AD, which is conducive to early detection, early intervention, and early intervention of the elderly. treat.
Zhang Yunlong introduced that at present, the kit has applied for 2 national invention patents, and is actively promoting the transformation of results. He hopes to put it into production as soon as possible and apply it to the early screening and prevention of Alzheimer's disease as soon as possible, bringing benefits to the elderly. .
It is reported that this kit was jointly developed by the School of Biological and Medical Engineering of Donghua University, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Xinli Health Management Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Quick Test Biotechnology Co., Ltd.
It is worth mentioning that in response to some key directions and key technologies in the current biomedical industry, the School of Biological and Medical Engineering of Donghua University has also established the "Nucleic Acid Drug Research Center", "Immuno Chromatography Detection Technology Laboratory" and "Geriatric Medicine and Health" Testing Laboratory" (in preparation), actively conducts academic research, and collaborates with enterprises to develop preclinical accurate disease diagnosis and auxiliary screening kit products to help the development of the health industry and better serve the Healthy China strategy.
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