IIT Bombay develops low-cost device to screen for anaemia, sickle cell disease

The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay on Friday said its researchers have developed a low-cost device that can screen for anaemia and sickle cell disease using a drop of blood.

A research team from the Department of Chemical Engineering, led by Mahesh Tirumkudulu, has developed a simple, low-cost point-of-care approach that uses the length of a blood smear (the distance that a drop of blood spreads across a glass slide) to detect anaemia, and detect and monitor treatment for sickle cell disease. IIT Bombay said.

Prof Tirumkudulu's team built their own automated device to have a uniform method of creating a smear. Under these controlled conditions, the researchers observed that blood from different people gives different smear lengths, and this difference holds useful information.

Prof. Tirumkudulu explained that more viscous blood spreads less easily and, therefore, produces a shorter and thicker smear under the same conditions.

Once the team confirmed that the method could sense small differences in blood viscosity, they decided to investigate whether those differences could help identify disease. It was found that anaemia lowers red blood cell concentration and haemoglobin, while sickle cell disease makes red blood cells rigid.

The researchers said their patented automated smearing device can be manufactured cost-effectively. Also, the test itself requires only a pipette, glass slides, an inexpensive chemical, vials for the sickling treatment, and a ruler or imaging device to measure smear length, they added.

"This makes our technique particularly useful in places where conventional diagnostic laboratories are difficult to access, and it doesn't require any special expertise to use," said Dr. Mahrukh Mir, a former PhD scholar in Prof Tirumkudulu's lab, and the first author of the study.

The researchers pointed out that blood viscosity cutoffs vary for various groups of people because certain genetic differences affect how blood reacts when oxygen levels drop.

Also, the anaemia test could miss identifying some patients when the usual link between viscosity and anaemia does not hold, such as in a rare condition called hyperviscosity syndrome, where blood plasma is unusually thick.

Currently, the technology is licensed to Rheoheme Private Limited, an IIT Bombay startup, and the team is now working with the National Institute for Research in Tribal Health, Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Nagpur, toward regulatory approval, while exploring extending the device to measure clotting time and glucose levels.

"Our initial aim was to understand the physics of spreading blood drop, and that led to the medical applications," added Prof Tirumkudulu.