Visual diagnosis of COVID-19 disease based on serum metabolites using a paper-based electronic tongue

Highlights

• An optoelectronic tongue was fabricated by non-specific receptors for detection of serum metabolites.

• The sensor was used to discriminate patients infected by COVID-19 from healthy controls.

• The discrimination analysis was achieved by comparison between the total responses of patient and healthy classes.

• The severity of the disease and the viral load associated with PCR analysis were estimated.

Abstract

This study aims to use a paper-based sensor array for point-of-care detection of COVID-19 diseases. Various chemical compounds such as nanoparticles, organic dyes and metal ion complexes were employed as sensing elements in the array fabrication, capturing the metabolites of human serum samples. The viral infection caused the type and concentration of serum compositions to change, resulting in different color responses for the infected and control samples. For this purpose, 118 serum samples of COVID-19 patients and non-COVID controls both men and women with the age range of 14–88 years were collected. The serum samples were initially subjected to the sensor, followed by monitoring the variation in the color of sensing elements for 5 min using a scanner. By taking into consideration the statistical information, this method was capable of discriminating COVID-19 patients and control samples with 83.0% accuracy. The variation of age did not influence the colorimetric patterns. The desirable correlation was observed between the sensor responses and viral load values calculated by the PCR test, proposing a rapid and facile way to estimate the disease severity. Compared to other rapid detection methods, the developed assay is cost-effective and user-friendly, allowing for screening COVID-19 diseases reliably.