As highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread in the U.S., posing serious threats to dairy and poultry farms, both farmers and public health experts need better ways to monitor for infections, in real time, to mitigate and respond to outbreaks.
As highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread in the U.S., posing serious threats to dairy and poultry farms, both farmers and public health experts need better ways to monitor for infections, in real time, to mitigate and respond to outbreaks. Now, thanks to research from Washington University in St. Louis published in a special issue of ACS Sensors on “breath sensing,” virus trackers have a way to monitor aerosol particles of H5N1.
To create their bird flu sensor, researchers in the lab of Rajan Chakrabarty, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at WashU’s McKelvey School of Engineering, worked with electrochemical capacitive biosensors to improve the speed and sensitivity of virus and bacteria detection.
Their work is crucially timed as the avian virus has taken a dangerous turn over the past year to being transmitted via airborne particles to mammals, including humans. The virus has been proven deadly in cats, and there has been at least one case of a human death from H5N1.
Read More: Washington University
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