Toward Rapid and Accurate Molecular Diagnostics at Home
Liu & Lee
The finding, in our words
This review summarises progress toward integrating automated sample preparation with on-chip nucleic acid amplification for home testing of self-collected blood, urine, saliva and stool specimens. It identifies that user-friendly, combined systems may enable rapid, accurate molecular diagnostics outside central laboratories, which is relevant for decentralised infectious disease screening.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This review identifies sample preparation as the key bottleneck limiting rapid home testing for infectious diseases, despite advances in nucleic acid amplification and signal transduction. It emphasises saliva, blood, urine and stool as primary self-collected specimens and discusses on-chip integration strategies to simplify operation for end-users, which could transform decentralised infectious disease diagnostics.
Liu et al., Accounts of chemical research (paywalled) · source ↗
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
This review found saliva comparable to blood and urine for detecting viral genetic material and antibodies, supporting patient-centric monitoring and decentralised surveillance. The authors state that standardised protocols and further validation are required for routine clinical use.
This review summarises how incorporating saliva and urine into home-based point-of-care systems expands diagnostic accessibility for dengue virus, aligning with the WHO REASSURED framework for affordable and rapid testing.
Shi et al., Journal of medical virology (paywalled) · source ↗
Self-collected saliva samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing yielded higher viral loads than nasal or urine specimens and showed moderate agreement (kappa 0.52) with nasal swabs. A colourimetric LAMP assay achieved 90% concordance with RT-PCR, offering a rapid alternative deployable in clinics, workplaces, and homes for decentralised surveillance.
Purcell-Wiltz et al., Immunity, inflammation and disease · source ↗