Application of a Waveguide-Mode Sensor to Blood Testing for Hepatitis B Virus, Hepatitis C Virus, Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Treponema pallidum Infection
1
Division of Biochemistry, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Nihon University School of Medicine, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 173-8610, Japan
2
Electronics and Photonics Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan
3
Department of Life Science & Green Chemistry, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Present address: Sensing System Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan.
Sensors 2019, 19(7), 1729; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19071729
Received: 28 February 2019 / Revised: 28 March 2019 / Accepted: 8 April 2019 / Published: 11 April 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Bio Sensing)
Testing for blood-transmitted infectious agents is an important aspect of safe medical treatment. During emergencies, such as significant earthquakes, many patients need surgical treatment and/or blood transfusion. Because a waveguide mode (WM) sensor can be used as a portable, on-site blood testing device in emergency settings, we have previously developed WM sensors for detection of antibodies against hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus and for forward ABO and Rh(D) and reverse ABO blood typing. In this study, we compared signal enhancement methods using secondary antibodies conjugated with peroxidase, a fluorescent dye, and gold nanoparticles, and found that the peroxidase reaction method offers superior sensitivity while gold nanoparticles provide the most rapid detection of anti-HBs antibody. Next, we examined whether we could apply a WM sensor with signal enhancement with peroxidase or gold nanoparticles to detection of antibodies against hepatitis C virus, human immunodeficiency virus and Treponema pallidum, and HBs antigen in plasma. We showed that a WM sensor can detect significant signals of these infectious agents within 30 min. Therefore, a portable device utilizing a WM sensor can be used for on-site blood testing of infectious agents in emergency settings.