New technique can quickly detect fentanyl and other opioids
Testing method can analyze blood samples twice as quickly as other techniques
2024-02-22
(Press-News.org)
University of Waterloo researchers have developed a new blood testing method that can detect potent opioids much faster than traditional approaches and potentially save lives.
The method, the latest effort by Waterloo researchers and entrepreneurs to lead health innovation in Canada, can simultaneously analyze 96 blood samples that could contain opioids such as fentanyl in under three minutes – twice as quickly as other techniques.
"The difference between our blood testing method and traditional methods used in laboratories and hospitals is that we can do it faster and reach the same conclusion," said Emir Nazdrajić, a postdoctoral fellow in Waterloo's Department of Chemistry and co-author of a study that details the new technique.
"Let's say someone who has overdosed is in the emergency room, and doctors need to quickly determine what they've taken to treat them effectively. The speed of our method can be lifesaving."
In 2022, over 70,000 Americans died of overdoses from fentanyl, an opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin. About 7,000 people die from fentanyl annually in Canada, nearly one-third of which occurs in British Columbia, which is among the worst rates per capita in North America.
When using the Waterloo-designed method, the researchers place a small amount of blood in a 96-well plate with a phosphate buffer. The well plate is then put in a machine that agitates the samples, and a solid phase microextraction (SPME) probe is introduced to enhance the drugs of interest. The sample is then analyzed by a mass spectrometer coupled to a microfluidic open interface, with results available in about 90 seconds.
"There is a high demand for rapid screening methods using mass spectrometry (MS) that can decrease the turnaround time, cost, and limits of quantitation of existing methodologies," said Dr. Janusz Pawliszyn, corresponding author of the study and a professor in Waterloo's Department of Chemistry. "Our method targets not only fentanyl but other drugs and certain types of diseases."
A study detailing the new blood testing method, co-author by Nazdrajić, Pawliszyn and Daniel Ricket, a PhD candidate in Waterloo's Department of Chemistry, was recently published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.
END
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2024-02-22
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) has discovered a giant ultra-high-energy gamma-ray bubble structure in the Cygnus star-forming region, which is the first time that the origin of cosmic rays with energy higher than 10 Peta-Electronvolt (PeV, 1PeV=1015eV) has been discovered. This achievement was published in the form of a cover article in Science Bulletin on Feb. 26. The research was completed by the LHAASO Collaboration led by Prof. CAO Zhen as the spokesperson from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the ...
2024-02-22
Imagine doubling the processing power of your smartphone, tablet, personal computer, or server using the existing hardware already in these devices.
Hung-Wei Tseng, a UC Riverside associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has laid out a paradigm shift in computer architecture to do just that in a recent paper titled, “Simultaneous and Heterogeneous Multithreading.”
Tseng explained that today’s computer devices increasingly have graphics processing units (GPUs), hardware accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), or digital signal processing units as essential components. These components ...
2024-02-22
Home health care use in the last three years of a patient’s life is associated with a higher likelihood of hospice care at the end of life, according to a Rutgers Health study.
Researchers, whose findings are published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, examined the home health care and hospice care experiences of more than 2 million people.
“In addition to benefits for the patient, hospice care also provides resources and support to help family caregivers cope with the physical, emotional and practical challenges of caring for a loved one at the end of life,” said Olga Jarrín, senior author of the ...
2024-02-22
For the first time researchers have identified patterns of risk for several different types of cancer in men with fertility problems and their families.
The study, which is published today (Thursday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, found that families of men who have very few or no sperm in their semen have a higher risk of developing cancer, including developing cancer at younger ages, compared to families of fertile men.
The risk and the type of cancer varied greatly depending on whether the men had low numbers of sperm (oligozoospermic) or none (azoospermic), with several cancers identified ...
2024-02-22
1. Background
Many proteins within the body form complexes with other proteins, determining the fate of cells. Therefore, the analysis of protein-protein interactions (PPI) is a crucial process for understanding the biological function of target proteins. Membrane proteins, which account for over 30% of human genes, play a vital role in cell functions. Many membrane proteins are known to form complexes to exert their functions, making the elucidation of membrane protein PPIs essential for understanding protein function. However, the development of technologies to analyze PPIs, especially extracellular protein–protein interactions (exPPIs) of living cells, has ...
2024-02-22
PHILADELPHIA—(Feb. 21, 2024)—The Wistar Institute’s associate professor Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, Ph.D., has demonstrated, with his lab and collaborators, a connection between viral damage to the gut and premature biological aging. The group found that this pro-aging connection can contribute to both gut permeability and premature systemic & intestinal tissue aging in people living with chronic HIV infection, and their discovery is detailed in the newly published paper titled, “Distinct Intestinal Microbial Signatures Linked to Accelerated Systemic and Intestinal Biological Aging,” published in the journal Microbiome.
When people's bodies age faster ...
2024-02-22
Key points:
Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) may increase seniors’ risk of cardiovascular hospitalization, with disproportionate impacts on residents of socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
The findings suggest that to protect heart health, there is no safe threshold for chronic PM2.5 exposure, and that the EPA’s newly updated standard for the U.S.’s annual average PM2.5 level isn’t low enough to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease or protect public health overall.
Boston, MA—Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants ...
2024-02-22
A UCL-developed app that provides speech therapy for people with the language disorder aphasia has been found to significantly improve their ability to talk.
iTalkBetter, developed by the Neurotherapeutics Group at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, provides users the digital platform to practice over 200 commonly used words, in their own time and without any limits on the amount of therapy they receive.
While employing games to maintain engagement, the app’s integrated speech recogniser analyses speech in real time to give the user feedback on whether they have named the displayed item correctly.
A new study, published in eClinicalMedicine, ...
2024-02-22
Using intravascular imaging to guide stent implantation during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in heart disease patients significantly improves survival and reduces adverse cardiovascular events compared to angiography-guided PCI alone, the most commonly used method.
These are the results from the largest and most comprehensive clinical study of its kind comparing two types of intravascular imaging methods (intravascular ultrasound, or IVUS, and optical coherence tomography, or OCT) with angiography-guided PCI. The study, published Wednesday, February 21, in The Lancet, is the first to show that these two methods of ...
2024-02-22
Short and long term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution is linked to an increased risk of hospital admission for major heart and lung diseases, find two large US studies, published by The BMJ today.
Together, the results suggest that no safe threshold exists for heart and lung health.
According to the Global Burden of Disease study, exposure to PM2.5 accounts for an estimated 7.6% of total global mortality and 4.2% of global disability adjusted life years (a measure of years lived in good health).
In light of this extensive evidence, the World Health Organization ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] New technique can quickly detect fentanyl and other opioids
Testing method can analyze blood samples twice as quickly as other techniques