Olivia Hallisey of Greenwich, won the top prize for her Ebola test kit in the fifth annual Google Science Fair, which honored nine students aged 13 to 18 from all over the world last week. The Connecticut-based sophomore from Greenwich High School invented the much needed “novel temperature-dependent, rapid, simple and inexpensive Ebola detection platform.” It could soon be much easier to diagnose Ebola thanks to this student’s new invention.
Aid workers in Ebola-stricken regions could soon be using a new tool that allows them to diagnose patients in under 30 minutes even when they don’t have symptoms.
Current methods of Ebola detection utilize enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (“ELISA”) detection kits which cost approximately $1,00 each, require complex instrumentation, trained medical professionals to administer, and up to 12 hours from testing to diagnosis. The kits require the unbroken refrigeration of reagents from point of manufacture to point of use (the “cold chain”), making the ability to diagnose in remote areas, where refrigeration is often nonexistent or unreliable, highly problematic if not impossible.
Hallisey utilized silk fibres and Ebola ELISA reagents, and all the properties needed to cause a change of color if the virus is detected in the blood. Add a simple serum sample and water, and the kit can start saving lives.
In this new device, that is stable and stored at room temperature, 30 drops of water were used to dissolve silk-embedded reagents, initiating a timed-flow towards a center detection zone, where a positive (colored) result confirmed the presence of 500pg/ml Ebol despite lack of symptoms. The kit can detect the virus twenty four times the usual and the Ebola antibodies can stand for a week without refrigeration.
While scientists are making great strides toward creating a vaccine, early detection is vital to a patient’s survival. Early symptoms of an Ebola infection, such as fever, aren’t specific to the virus and are also common in other illnesses including malaria and typhoid fever thus making it hard to diagnose. A patient is more likely to survive because an early diagnosis can prevent dehydration, by instructing patients to drink fluids. Delayed diagnosis and treatment is the heart of the West African Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 and killed nearly three-quarters of the people who contracted the virus.
The teenager hopes to decrease the mortality rate of Ebola virus to nearly half, that is, from 90% to 50%, if early detection and treatment is prompt.
At a cost of $25, the deadly Ebola virus that caused death to more than a thousand lives can now be detected in a matter of 30 minutes, all thanks to Olivia Hallisey.
For more information please visit: www.googlesciencefair.com
