医院的很多检查都需要提取血液或尿样的样本,不过英国的研究人员正在测试一种新型的墨水试纸,这种试纸在接触病人的化验样本后,上面墨水点的颜色会产生变化,病人可以得到最及时最直观的检测结果.

Believe it or not, a few tiny ink dots on a small square of plastic the size of a fingernail could eventually revolutionize the way the medical industry tests patients for a range of health conditions.

For the first time, scientists say they have found a way to print antibodies onto disposable strips.

Each of these dots is just one millimeter in diameter and contains a special ink impregnated with a specific living antibody.

Scientists are currently using a hi-tech desktop printer—a scaled-down version of a commercial press—which uses specially developed ink that acts as the carrier for an antibody and enables it to adhere to the surface of a disposable plastic strip. The printer produces a series of dots on an area the size of a postage stamp.

Doctor Chris Philips, Research Officer at Swansea University, says the technology allows for a flexible range of applications.

"The project has been running for about two years, and we're at the stage where we can happily print antibodies onto pretty much any plastic that we want using this special coating. And we also print antibodies onto membranes that are used for things like lateral flow tests for testing pregnancy."

Using the new printed antibodies, doctors can expose the plastic strip to blood or urine samples. They can see the results almost immediately by looking at how the dots change color or using a handheld device.

Chris Philips says simple color tagging is all that's needed.

"A range of tags could be used—a simple color tag to give, say, a blue color in the presence of a virus, for example. Or a light emission that can be read by a machine, or some kind of electrical or magnetic signal."

The technology could have an impact in health centers and general medical clinics where patients could, potentially, be able to receive an almost instantaneous diagnosis.

Doctor David Bailey, a general practitioner at a clinic in Cardiff, Wales, says the technology could be a useful new tool alongside traditional blood testing.

"For some things I think it would be very, very helpful—for when you're screening for cholesterol or possibly for slightly low blood counts and things like that, where you're not too worried about the absolute final accuracy. That might well be very helpful for patients because you can actually tell them the answer there and then when you see them rather than bringing them back later."

Doctors hope that large printing presses like this one at the university can eventually be used to create mass print antibodies and that one day people will be able to use the technology to test themselves.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.

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