Could you text me your blood sample?

 00:02 22 July 2009 by Colin Barras

In the developed world, we take camera phones for granted as ways to record our lives
– but in poorer countries they could be used to save lives, say bioengineers. The US
team has designed a portable microscope that straps to a camera phone and can be
used to diagnose potentially fatal diseases in blood and sputum samples.

Light microscopy is an essential healthcare tool that can help to diagnose dangerous
diseases including malaria and tuberculosis. If necessary, digital images of cell samples
provided by camera-equipped lab microscopes are shuttled through the internet to
experts at other healthcare centres for further analysis.

But these technologies are often unavailable to those in remote regions or the
developing world – although life-threatening diseases are often endemic in these places,
says Daniel Fletcher at the University of California in Berkeley.

Cheap and fast

His team, working with colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco,
wondered whether the technology that does exist in the developing world could be
harnessed for medical purposes.

A recent UN report estimated cellphones are now used by 60 per cent of the world's
population, and cellphone networks are extensive even in the developing world. Such
networks, the team realized, offer a cheap and fast way to wirelessly transmit medical
data from the field to healthcare centers.

Furthermore, in 2007, John Frean at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases,
Sandringham, South Africa, showed that the cameras integrated into many cellphones
can capture relatively good quality images of tissue samples simply by holding them
against the eyepiece of a light microscope.

Strap-on scope

Fletcher's team decided to go a step further by developing an integrated cellphone

microscopy system. They used off-the-shelf parts to design a cheap and portable
microscope attachment that straps to a Nokia N73 cameraphone (see image).
"To keep the cost down we went with lenses that aren't corrected for many
aberrations," he says. Nevertheless, the microscope can pick out objects just 1.2
micrometers across – red blood cells are typically 6 to 8 micrometers across.

Ambient light is enough for clear imaging of medical samples, but the researchers also
added a battery-powered LED lamp and a series of filters to allow the device to function
as a fluorescent microscope as well.

The team tested the device against a range of common diseases and conditions. Malaria
parasites are visible in blood smears viewed under a microscope, and the team says
that images of malaria-infected blood captured with the cameraphone are potentially
good enough to diagnose the disease. The system could also diagnose sickle-cell
anaemia from blood samples, while fluorescent images of a stained sputum smear were
sufficient to identify the presence of tuberculosis.

Cellphone counting

The researchers could even take advantage of the cameraphone's computing power to
begin post-processing of the images.

"Cell counting is the main thing we have done," Fletcher says. "Additional things could
include annotating an image to point out a problem or a question to be answered by a
doctor at a central hospital."

If the image is coupled with the patient's details and location, the system could also
help track the spread of a disease through the population, he says.

David Becker at University College London in the UK thinks the new system is a "simple
yet elegant solution". He says that different coloured LEDs could be added to expand
the range of cells that can be imaged.

Frean thinks the efforts to make diagnostic tools cheaper and accessible are
"commendable", as long as workers are trained to use the devices properly.

"Cheap digital photography tailored to microscope applications, and transmission of

images via cellphone or the internet should indeed be pursued and made more
accessible," he says. He adds, though, that the system would benefit from higher
quality parts to improve the results.

Journal reference: Public Library of Science One (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006320)

Genetically altered mosquitoes thwart dengue spreaders

 18:27 11 November 2010 by Andy Coghlan

 For similar stories, visit the GM Organisms Topic Guide

An outdoor trial of mosquitoes genetically engineered to sabotage Aedes aegypti

mosquitoes, which spread dengue fever, has been declared a success by scientists in
the field.

The trial is first time genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in the wild.
The strategy promises to provide a new weapon against dengue, a disease that infects
50 million people annually and kills 25,000. In the past year, dengue has reappeared in
the US for the first time in 65 years, and in southern Europe.

By the end of the six-month trial on a 16-hectare plot, populations of the native insects,
which spread the dengue virus, had plummeted.

"It's a proof of principle, that it works," says Angela Harris of the Mosquito Control and
Research Unit on the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman, where the trial took place. The
MCRU conducted the trial with Oxitec, the company in Oxford, UK, that bred the GM
mosquitoes.

Combating disease

The only current method of combating dengue is to kill and control the mosquitoes that
pick up and spread the virus when they feed on blood from infected individuals.
"There's no vaccine, no preventative drugs as there are with malaria, and no
therapeutic drugs," says Luke Alphey, the chief scientist and founder of Oxitec.

The only control measures are therefore to kill the mosquitoes with insecticides or
monitor and restrict the small pools of water, saucers and receptacles where they
breed. "The range of options really is extremely limited," says Alphey, adding that the
disease poses a threat to 40 per cent of the world's population.
Oxitec breeds millions of males carrying an altered gene called tTA which they pass
down when they mate with females. The lethal gene overcommits the gene-reading
machinery of larva and pupae, preventing them from growing properly and causing
them to die before adulthood, breaking the insects' life cycle.

In the six months of the trial, the researchers released males in batches of 50,000. A
total of 3.3 million were released.

"Males don't bite, so no one gets sick," says Harris.

Egg patrol

The researchers measured depletion of the population through weekly checks on eggs
laid by the females in jam-jar-sized pots that were randomly dispersed throughout the
trial plot. For the first three months or so, the proportion of pots containing at least one
egg gradually rose, reaching a peak of more than 60 per cent but by the end of the
experiment the proportion had fallen to 10 per cent.

The researchers conclude that the number of females laying eggs nosedived because
most were dying as larvae. The resources consumed by the doomed larvae and pupae
before they die vie with normal rivals for resources, which helps to reduce the
population.

Since the trial ended a month ago, Harris and her colleagues have been monitoring the
site to see how long it takes for the population to recover. They hope to establish how
many males need to be released, for how long, and where in order to effectively
suppress natural populations.

Alphey says that the Cayman trial was intended purely to prove that the strategy works.
Oxitec now plans to use the GM males in conjunction with normal control methods to
combat the mosquitoes.

Live trials

Oxitec has already conducted indoor trials in Malaysia, and has approval to conduct
contained trials in many other dengue-affected countries, including Brazil, France, India,
the US, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.
Alphey say he is confident he can convince even those who are generally sceptical of
genetic modification to support the strategy as a mean of saving lives and preventing
sickness. He argues that the GM mosquitoes will not spiral out of control in the
environment because their offspring do not live long enough to reproduce.

In Australia, researchers are planning a different approach against dengue, using GM

mosquitoes carrying bacteria that sabotage breeding success. Projects are also under
way to develop GM mosquitoes to combat the spread of malaria.

Haemorrhagic virus carried by common African mouse

 18:00 13 October 2008 by Debora MacKenzie

Three people have died and another is seriously ill with a previously unknown strain of a
virus carried by a common African rodent. The virus requires close contact to spread,
but experts warn that more like it could be circulating.

A 36-year-old woman on a small farm outside the Zambian capital Lusaka developed
flu-like symptoms in early September. When they worsened she was taken by air
ambulance to South Africa, where she died.

Alarms were raised after the ambulance paramedic and the nurse who attended her
also died after developing similar symptoms two weeks later. The nurse who tended the
paramedic is also in a serious condition.

On Sunday South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases announced that
the victims were infected by an arenavirus, one of a family of viruses carried by
rodents.

"They are very widespread," says Bob Swanepoel, former head of the NICD and one of
the world's leading experts on haemorrhagic viruses. In Africa, arenaviruses are carried,
with no symptoms, by the multimammate mouse, a common farm pest sold in Europe
as a "pocket pet".

It is not known whether animals caught in Africa are being sold as pets.

Some of these viruses commonly infect humans. Several related viruses in the Americas
cause haemorrhagic fevers, but in Africa only one was known to cause disease: Lassa
fever, which kills around 5000 people a year in West Africa.

The rest seemed benign. "We have been testing haemorrhagic fever patients in
southern Africa for three decades and we never found an arenavirus," says Swanepoel.
"Now suddenly there's this."

The Zambian virus is being sequenced at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,
to see how it is related to other arenaviruses.

This strain may be a new mutant, meaning the Zambian case may herald the start of a
new disease. "Or it may always have been out there and we're only recognising it now,"
says Swanepoel. "It's shocking how little we know about the viruses that are circulating
in Africa."