Abstract
Blood glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), reflecting the average blood glucose level in the proceeding 2-3 months, is recommended for screening/diagnosing and patient management of diabetes. However, accurate measurement of the HbA1c level at the point of care is hampered by costly, large-scale instruments (such as high-performance liquid chromatography) or reagent instability of classical immunologic methods, which involve antibody-based immunoturbidimetry. In this work, an integrated microfluidic system using aptamer-based testing to measure HbA1c in blood samples is therefore presented. This measuring system used nucleic-acid aptamers that exhibited high sensitivity and high specificity for hemoglobin and HbA1c to perform a stable and robust testing. The compact microfluidic system consumed less samples and reagents and significantly shortened the detection time. Combining the advantages of microfluidics and aptamers, this integrated microsystem presents a promising tool for accurate and point-of-case HbA1c detection. To demonstrate its clinical utility, whole blood samples with clinically-relevant concentrations of HbA1c and Hb were automatically measured on the integrated microfluidic system. Experimental data showed that the developed aptamer-based microfluidic system is capable of detecting HbA1c and Hb with a good linear response. The entire process was completed within 25 min. The aptamer-antibody on-chip sandwich immunoassay may be further refined to allow diabetes screening and diagnosis at lower cost and earlier phase to minimize the risk of diabetic complications.