Macro and Micro life, Post 4

Thanks to the progress of genetics and molecular Biology, the medicine today has unimaginable compounds just a few years ago. Medical research advances every day in the hope of being able to respond to many diseases through gene therapy or via new vaccines.

Today I will write about mChip: a portable device the size of a credit card that allows you to perform blood tests. In Chemistry and Pharmacy would be a great help, because this device is able to detect HIV, syphilis and another 10 infectious disease. On the other hand, it can help us to save our money, because delays only 20 minutes to detect this diseases when in a Lab delays a lot of hours or days. 

I chose to write about mChip, because I think that is very interesting and beneficial for all. It could be very helpful to identify pregnant women diagnosed with a HVI and so we could quickly offer them a treatment that would avoid transmitting the virus to their children.

This device was presented in 2011, but I know about it since the last year and already been vetted by many people in Ruanda and has been able to diagnose HIV and syphilis with a unique sensitivity and specificity. 

The advantages of this type of scientific evidence are numerous as they would allow multiple applications in developing countries. In addition to HIV and syphilis, mChip could be oriented in the near future to detection of other infectious diseases such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Herpes, chlamydia... but, It’s still new to the scientific world and needs to more investigation.