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“People who don’t have access to the best-quality medicines also don’t have as many resources to buy the analytical instrumentation to detect the quality problems,” Marya Lieberman, PhD, a researcher involved with the development of the test, said in a statement. “Instead of a $30,000 instrument, we’ve developed a $1 paper card. We designed the card so it would be as easy and [as] inexpensive to use as possible.”
The test includes 12 “lanes,” or divided segments, each of which contains a different reactive agent that can detect degradation or commonly used fillers in drugs. If a drug begins to degrade due to conditions such as storage temperature, or if a medication has been falsified, the test should detect it. Then users can compare the color patterns from the paper with sample patterns with the naked eye or a phone-based app.
The team from Hamline University is also developing an X-ray based test that would scan pills for substances used to falsely color them.
More articles on antibiotics:
Multidrug-resistant bacteria can result in HAIs — But how do they come into the hospital?
4 thoughts on antibiotic resistance from expert Dr. Barbara Murray
How temporal predictive analytics can improve antibiotic prescription, sepsis care
