Research led by the public university of Tarragona in Spain has developed a biosensor device to quickly test someone’s susceptibility to osteoporosis with a simple blood test.
The researchers hope that this prototype device could help to quickly identify people in the population who might be at increased risk for developing osteoporosis and allow them to make lifestyle changes to help mitigate future risk of fractures.
Osteoporosis is a common condition affecting around 10 million Americans, significantly more women than men, that leads to reduced bone density and increased fracture risk. Around 44 million Americans are thought to have low bone density and be at risk of developing osteoporosis, but if caught early then diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors can be modified to help ward off the condition.
Although bone-mineral density scans are the gold standard to diagnose osteoporosis, having some idea of risk at an earlier stage would be helpful. There is a significant genetic component to osteoporosis risk and a genetic test could help healthcare providers understand who is at highest risk in the population.
Previous work has identified 15 SNPs that all increase risk for osteoporosis, but in this study the researchers selected five genetic variants –WNT16 (rs2908007), RSPO3 (rs10457487), FAM210A (rs4635400), SOST (rs2741856) and LCT (C/T-13910)—that are believed to convey the most significant fracture risk. The team then created an electrode array with DNA pieces from each of the fours single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) attached.
When blood from a sample is mixed to break open the cells and then applied to the device, DNA sections matching the four osteoporosis-linked SNPs bind to the pieces attached to the array. The signal is then increased using a recombinase polymerase and ferrocene, which allows the results to be detected electrochemically.
As DNA does not need to be purified to use this device, it means that the test can be carried out in around 15 minutes and at a low price of less than half a dollar per SNP.
“The platform is completely generic and has immense potential for deployment at the point of need in an automated device for targeted SNP genotyping with the only required end-user intervention being sample addition,” write Ciara O’Sullivan, a researcher in the INTERFIBIO Research Group, at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, and colleagues in the paper describing the work in ACS Central Science.
“This platform can be facilely expanded to a plethora of further applications, and the number of SNPs can be vastly increased according to the end-user requirements, with the complete analysis from blood lysis to final read-out completed in less than 20 min.”
