'Tricorder' device will detect infection and immune response to it

A portable device designed to detect not only the presence of an infection but also how the patient’s immune system is responding to it, could help doctors predict the likely severity of a disease.

The point of care sensor, which is being developed by an EU-funded consortium, can detect not only invading pathogens, but also small molecules produced by the immune system in response to the disease.

This can be used to predict how the disease will evolve in a particular patient, according to Leopold Georgi at the Technische Universitat Berlin, who is coordinating the Platform for ultra-sensitive Point-of-Care diagnostics for infectious diseases (PoC-ID) project.

A prototype device is being developed to detect the presence of respiratory syncytial infection (RSV) in children. The RSV virus, which infects nearly all children before their third birthday, usually mildly, can occasionally lead to severe conditions such as bronchiolitis and pneumonia.

“It’s quite hard to say with RSV if it will be severe enough for the infant to be hospitalised, or if it will be just a small fever,” said Georgi. “That is why we want to measure the immune response, because our immune system has the best biosensors you can have, better than any we technologists can make, so we want to combine the sensor technology of the body with sensors to identify the pathogen itself,” he said.