The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the world’s attention how a pandemic can burden hospitals all over the world, especially in regions where the healthcare system is already overburdened and low on resources. Low-resource settings would benefit considerably from point of care tests that can generate quick results, which would allow hospitals and/or clinics to properly allocate resources for treatment. In this thesis, we designed a blood separation system that: separates plasma from whole blood efficiently and is cheaper and more efficient than the gold standard of centrifugation. The blood separation system allows for the pooling and collection of plasma which can then be used to run a diagnostic test. A centrifuge separates blood by creating a gravity field generated by high-speed rotation. In this study, we used fidget-spinners, toys that can be manually spun with the flick of the finger, to generate a gravitational field strong enough to separate plasma from whole blood. We also designed an automated spinner, made of affordable parts, to make the fidget-spinner method of separating blood more efficient and easier to use. The spinner includes a 12V DC motor that can spin at up to 12000 rpm with no load and 3D printed parts that attach to the motor and hold the blood samples. Blood volumes ranging from 25 – 100 μL were used to test the separation methods. Using the spinner manually resulted in a plasma yield of around 30-40% with plasma purity of 65-75%. With a motorized spinner, plasma yield and purity were similar to the yield and purity of centrifuged samples. These findings provide support for the feasibility of low resource- based methods to separate whole blood in regions where a centrifuge is not available.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/43088 |
| Date | 25 September 2021 |
| Creators | Ahmed, Bilal Syed |
| Contributors | Zaman, Muhammad H., Cabodi, Mario |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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