Heart failure is a leading cause of death worldwide and is especially fatal for people who don't have access to medical facilities. So, a team of researchers aims to bring heart failure screening from the lab to the home. Their point-of-care electrochemical biosensor prototype, which resembles a see-through lateral flow test for COVID-19, can measure levels of two biomarkers for heart failure in as little as 15 minutes from just a drop of saliva.
Trey Pittman, a graduate student at Colorado State University, will present his team's research at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2024 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in person Aug. 18-22; it features about 10,000 presentations on a range of science topics.
Our device would be ideal for people who are at high risk for heart failure but have limited access to a hospital or a centralized lab. Working on this project to address health disparities in rural and low-resource areas really hits home for me because I'm from Mississippi, which has one of the highest mortality rates from heart failure in the United States," Trey Pittman, graduate student at Colorado State University Heart failure refers to weakened heart muscle that cannot pump enough oxygenated blood through the body. The current gold standard for heart failure screening is a blood test administered twice per year by a health care professional that measures levels of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a protein that indicates the .