Carbon Dot-Based Optical Point-of-Care Device for Detection of Neonatal Jaundice

According to the clinical guidelines in most nations, bilirubin, a yellow pigment created during the breakdown of heme, is a crucial biomarker for neonatal jaundice. The existing techniques for quantifying bilirubin need specialized equipment, intricate procedures, and are time-consuming. In this article, we demonstrate the use of carbon dots (CDs) for bilirubin estimation. Quantum quenching in CD is analyzed and utilized to measure bilirubin in artificial blood serum (ABS). Because of their distinctive optical characteristics and biocompatibility, CDs have been extensively used in biomedical applications. CDs conjugated with bovine serum albumin (BSA) also undergo quantum quenching when exposed to bilirubin. The interaction of bilirubin with both bare and BSA-conjugated CDs was studied. BSA stabilizes CD in water-based solutions, maintains luminescence, and prevents aggregation. Its strong affinity for bilirubin enables efficient interaction and carrier interaction. The BSA CD conjugate showed a linear response in the testing of bilirubin. We also developed a point-of-care (POC) testing device comprising a spectral sensor, a light source, and a controller to determine the intensity of the quantum dot (QD) quenching. The intensity was inversely proportional to the concentration of the bilirubin. We report an accuracy of 97.28% when compared with a standard method. The size of the CD was an average 3 nm. The ANOVA test for the repeated tests showed a p-value of 0.971, which showed good reproducibility. This device demonstrated promising results and needs to be explored for its potential applications in neonatal Jaundice detection in remote areas and laboratory conditions.