A Rutgers researcher, through his spin-off company, led a team to design and test a device that rapidly counts White blood cells of a person with a single drop of blood, similar to the way glucometers quickly scan blood sugar levels.
The results of the study were published in the scientific and medical journal PLoS One.
This is how the portable white blood cell detector works
Mehdi Javanmard, Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers School of Engineering, is co-founder and CEO of RizLab Health Inc, based in Princeton. He launched the startup based on his progress in his Rutgers lab.
“Normally, running a complete blood count requires a blood sampler to take a needle and collect significant amounts of venous blood and send the samples to labs where they are tested, sometimes taking hours or even days,” Javanmard said. “Our portable device allows tests to be performed close to the patient, requiring only a small amount of blood and returning results within minutes, allowing doctors to make decisions almost immediately.”
Called the CytoTracker leukometer, the device is designed to quickly help detect high or low white blood cell counts, a critical signal of the state of a patient's immune system. A high or low white blood cell count can indicate the intensity of an infection, the presence of life-threatening conditions such as sepsis, or determine how patients respond to chemotherapy and psychotropic medications.
In collaboration with a clinical team at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Pediatric Clinical Research Center led by Dr. Tanaya Bhowmick and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, the device was successfully tested in trials through direct comparison with a laboratory bench hematology analyzer, a conventional blood testing technique.
“Rapid test results have revolutionized the field of medicine,” said Bhowmick, an infectious disease physician and co-author of the paper. “The white blood cell count is a parameter that doctors routinely prescribe to evaluate a patient for a possible infection. Having this information quickly can help classify patients in outpatient settings.”
The results showed that the CytoTracker leukometer is at least 97% accurate and meets clinical standards.
White blood cells, or leukocytes, protect the body from infections. Colorless, they make up about 1% of human blood and are formed mainly in the bone marrow. Some subtypes of leukocytes have different functions. For example, neutrophils kill bacteria, fungi, and foreign debris.
A low white blood cell count indicates that a person is prone to infections. A high white blood cell count means that an infection exists or that an underlying medical condition exists.
Javanmard said he envisions multiple uses for the device. Sepsis in a patient entering an emergency room could be detected more quickly on the device than current methods that require a blood draw and laboratory test, she said. Oncology doctors could quickly determine whether patients undergoing chemotherapy need a white blood cell stimulant.
The device could also make it easier for psychiatric patients to continue taking their medications. Patients taking clozapine, a common treatment for disorders such as schizophrenia, often experience neutropenia, or low levels of neutrophils.
These patients must undergo regular testing for neutrophil levels before they can get a prescription. Javanmard said this often prevents patients from getting much-needed care.
In his lab at Rutgers, Javanmard and his students have been trying to perfect the capabilities of a miniaturized electronic cytometric technique that detects microscopic particles by directing them through tiny channels containing electrodes. The process is similar to scanning people as they individually move through an airport security gate; however, it uses electrical signals instead of videography.
In a recent advance, Javanmard said he and members of the lab used the cell flow technique to develop a test so sensitive that it could one day revolutionize medical approaches to epidemics. RizLab Health has been focused on further advancing the development and manufacturing of electronic cytometry with the goal of achieving regulatory approval and ultimately commercialization.
Javanmard is excited about applying laboratory knowledge to practical problems to produce inventions like the CytoTracker leukometer.
“We set out to solve one of the holy grails of medicine, which is to analyze a small amount of a patient's blood in order to provide guidance to doctors and improve clinical outcomes,” Javanmard said. “We believe this will have a huge impact on infectious diseases, oncology and psychiatry.”
Javanmard added: “Others have made failed attempts to tackle this Holy Grail by aiming to identify dozens or even hundreds of biochemical constituents with a single drop of blood. Such attempts are fundamentally very difficult. As a result, we found that it is much more realistic to focus only on white blood cells from key subtypes.”
The device must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration before it can be marketed and used for clinical applications, Javanmard said. It is currently for research use only.
Other scientists involved in the Rutgers paper included Fei Chen, a nurse in the Pediatric Clinical Research Center at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and Sunanda Gaur, a pediatric infectious disease physician and director of the school's Pediatric Clinical Research Center at medicine. The Baylor scientists included Kelly Keene, Farzad Soleimani and Zubaid Rafique.
White blood cells are part of the immune system that protects the body from infections. These cells circulate through your bloodstream and tissues to respond to injury or disease by attacking any unknown organisms that enter your body.
They are also known as leukocytes, they are responsible for protecting the body from infections. As part of the immune system, they circulate in the blood and respond to injury or disease.
White blood cells protect the body from infections. As they travel through the bloodstream and tissues, they locate the site of an infection and act like an army general to notify other leukocytes of their location to help defend your body from attack by an unknown organism. Once it arrives, your army of leukocytes fights the invader by producing antibody proteins that attach to the body and destroy it.
Contrary to their name, white blood cells are colorless but can appear very light purple to pink in color when examined under a microscope and stained with dye. These extremely small cells have a round shape with a distinct central membrane (nucleus).
The formation of white blood cells occurs in the soft tissues within the bones (bone marrow). Two types of white blood cells (lymphocytes) grow in the thymus gland (T cells) and in the lymph nodes and spleen (B cells). Leukocytes come from cells that turn into other cells in the body (stem cells) within the soft tissue of bones (bone marrow).
There are five types of white blood cells:
Neutrophils: Help protect the body from infections by killing bacteria, fungi, and foreign debris.
Lymphocytes: These are made up of T cells, natural killer cells, and B cells that protect against viral infections and produce proteins to help fight infections (antibodies).
Eosinophils: identify and destroy parasites, tumor cells and help basophils in the allergic response.
Basophils: Produce an allergic response such as coughing, sneezing, or a runny nose.
Monocytes: Defend against infections by cleaning up damaged cells
If you have a low white blood cell count you are likely to get infections (leukopenia). If your white blood cell count is too high (leukocytosis), you may have an infection or an underlying medical condition such as leukemia, lymphoma, or an immune disorder.
Symptoms of white blood cell conditions, in which you may have a count that is too high or too low, include:
Fever, muscle aches and chills.
Wound red, swollen, oozing pus, or does not heal.
Frequent infections.
Persistent cough or difficulty breathing.
It is normal that every day we produce almost 100 billion leukocytes. After completing a blood draw, a test counts white blood cells, which equals the number of cells per microliter of blood. The normal count varies between 4,000 and 11,000 cells per microliter.
A complete blood count (CBC) test identifies information about your blood cells. A laboratory completes this test after a doctor draws blood and examines the number of white and red blood cells.
A white blood cell scan is a test to detect infections or abscesses in the soft tissues of the body. This test involves taking blood, separating the leukocytes from the sample, labeling them with a radioactive isotope, putting them back into the body, then an imaging test will identify areas that show an infection or abscess on the body.
Causes of low white blood cell counts include:
Bone marrow failure (aplastic anemia).
Bone marrow attacked by cancer cells (leukemia).
Exposure to drugs (chemotherapy).
Vitamin deficiency (B12).
HIV/AIDS .
A blood test with fewer than 4,000 cells per microliter of blood diagnoses a low white blood cell count.
Causes of a high white blood cell count include:
Autoimmune disorders (lupus, rheumatoid arthritis).
Viral infections (tuberculosis, mononucleosis).
Bacterial infections (sepsis).
Physical injury or stress.
Leukemia or Hodgkins disease.
Allergies.
A blood test with more than 11,000 cells per microliter of blood diagnoses a high number of white blood cells.
Treatment for white blood cell disorders varies based on the diagnosis and severity of the condition. The treatment varies from:
Vitamin intake.
Taking antibiotics.
Surgery to replace or repair bone marrow.
Blood transfusion .
Stem cell transplant
You can take care of your white blood cells:
Practice good hygiene to prevent infection.
Take vitamins to strengthen your immune system.
Treat medical conditions in which leukocyte disorders are a side effect.
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