Brown University engineers partnered with public health experts to create new diagnostic techniques that could help to deliver better, patient-centered care to adults and newborns alike.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - As the opioid epidemic persists across the United States, a team of researchers from Brown University has developed new diagnostic techniques for detecting opioid compounds in adults with opioid use disorder and infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
The new techniques, described in two recently published research studies, could equip health care workers with powerful new tools for more effectively treating conditions related to opioid exposure, the researchers say.
In a study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers describe a method that can rapidly detect six different opioid compounds from a tiny amount of serum - no more than a finger prick. The second study, published in SLAS Technology, demonstrates a method for detecting opioids in dried blood spots, which are routinely collected from newborns nationwide. The technique could enable a first-of-its-kind quantitative method for assessing opioid exposure in newborns.
The research was led by Ramisa Fariha, a postdoctoral research associate in molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry at Brown who performed the work while completing her Ph.D. in Brown's School of Engineering. The work was a collaboration with Carolina Haass-Koffler, an associate professor at Brown's School of Public Health.
"This project is an example of what happens when translational engineering meets public health," said Anubhav Tripathi, a professor in Brown's School of Engineering who oversaw the work. "Dr. Haass-Koffler approached us with a challenge: How can we enable more reliable testing of opioid exposure? Ramisa was able to take up that challenge and develop something quite remarkable in the lab."
Fariha hopes the work will spur real-world application in opioid treatment.
"This wasn't about creating another lab tool," she said. "It was about reimagining what's possible at the point of care. We were responding to a void that was always there, and we wanted to address it."
