Work

Point-of-care device to diagnose and monitor neonatal jaundice in low-resource settings

Year: 2017

Type: article

Abstract: Significance Neonatal jaundice, a condition caused by the accumulation of bilirubin in the bloodstream, affects approximately half of all newborns. In high-resource settings, babies with elevated serum bilirubin levels are identified through routine hospital laboratory testing. When identified, jaundice is easily treated using blue-light phototherapy. Low-cost, rugged phototherapy lights have been developed and shown to be effective in low-resource settings. However, jaundice regularly goes undetected in these settings due to a lack of diagnostic tools to measure bilirubin levels. Left untreated, jaundice can lead to permanent neurological damage and mortality, the vast majority of which currently occurs in low-resource settings. In this paper, we present a low-cost method to measure total bilirubin at the point of care in low-resource settings.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714020114