Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Feb 10:12:807253.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.807253. eCollection 2022.

Advances in the Rapid Diagnostic of Viral Respiratory Tract Infections

Gratiela Gradisteanu Pircalabioru  1 , Florina Silvia Iliescu  2 , Grigore Mihaescu  3 , Alina Irina Cucu  3 , Octavian Narcis Ionescu  2   4 , Melania Popescu  2 , Monica Simion  2 , Liliana Burlibasa  3 , Mihaela Tica  5 , Mariana Carmen Chifiriuc  1   3   6   7 , Ciprian Iliescu  2   6   8
Affiliations
Review

Advances in the Rapid Diagnostic of Viral Respiratory Tract Infections

Gratiela Gradisteanu Pircalabioru et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Viral infections are a significant public health problem, primarily due to their high transmission rate, various pathological manifestations, ranging from mild to severe symptoms and subclinical onset. Laboratory diagnostic tests for infectious diseases, with a short enough turnaround time, are promising tools to improve patient care, antiviral therapeutic decisions, and infection prevention. Numerous microbiological molecular and serological diagnostic testing devices have been developed and authorised as benchtop systems, and only a few as rapid miniaturised, fully automated, portable digital platforms. Their successful implementation in virology relies on their performance and impact on patient management. This review describes the current progress and perspectives in developing micro- and nanotechnology-based solutions for rapidly detecting human viral respiratory infectious diseases. It provides a nonexhaustive overview of currently commercially available and under-study diagnostic testing methods and discusses the sampling and viral genetic trends as preanalytical components influencing the results. We describe the clinical performance of tests, focusing on alternatives such as microfluidics-, biosensors-, Internet-of-Things (IoT)-based devices for rapid and accurate viral loads and immunological responses detection. The conclusions highlight the potential impact of the newly developed devices on laboratory diagnostic and clinical outcomes.

Keywords: IoT - internet of things; biosensors; microfluidics; point-of-care; viral respiratory infection.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tools. While Real Time PCR from nasopharyngeal swabs represents the gold standard from COVID-19 diagnostic, other approaches are currently being employed or developed. Among these, research is focused on various types of biosensors (chip based, paper based, graphene-based biosensors), some of them coupled with smartphone analysis. Original figure, created using biorender.com.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Working principle of an IoT PCR for RTI detection and spread monitoring. Adapted with permission from (Zhu et al., 2020).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aalberts M., van Dissel-Emiliani F. M. F., van Adrichem N. P., van Wijnen H. M., Wauben M. H., Stout T. A., et al. . (2012). Identification of Distinct Populations of Prostasomes That Differentially Express Prostate Stem Cell Antigen, Annexin A1, and GLIPR2 in Humans. Biol. Reprod. 86, 1–8. doi: 10.1095/biolreprod.111.095760 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Afroj S., Britnell L., Hasan T., Andreeva D. V., Novoselov K. S., Karim N. (2021). Graphene-Based Technologies for Tackling COVID-19 and Future Pandemics. Adv. Funct. Mater. 31, 2107407. doi: 10.1002/adfm.202107407 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ahluwalia G., Embree J., McNicol P., Law B., Hammond G. (1987). Comparison of Nasopharyngeal Aspirate and Nasopharyngeal Swab Specimens for Respiratory Syncytial Virus Diagnosis by Cell Culture, Indirect Immunofluorescence Assay, and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay. J. Clin. Microbiol. 25, 763–767. doi: 10.1128/jcm.25.5.763-767.1987 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ahmadivand A., Gerislioglu B., Ramezani Z., Kaushik A., Manickam P., Ghoreishi S. A. (2021). Functionalized Terahertz Plasmonic Metasensors: Femtomolar-Level Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Proteins. Biosens. Bioelectron. 177, 112971. doi: 10.1016/j.bios.2021.112971 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andreini P., Bonechi S., Bianchini M., Mecocci A., Scarselli F. (2018). “A Deep Learning Approach to Bacterial Colony Segmentation”, in International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (Rhodes, Greece: Springer; ).

Publication types