Validation of Point-of-Care Device for Rapid Detection of Salmonella enterica in Meat Products

Accurateand rapid detection of pathogens in foods of animal originhas been a critical part of the One Health Action Plan of the EuropeanUnion (EU). Biosensors have the potential in bringing required technologiesto accomplish this on the field, wherein loop-mediated isothermalamplification (LAMP) and lab-on-a-chip have proven to be ideal. Wehave developed a LAMP-based point-of-care (POC) device, the VETPOD,as a solution to the contemporary challenges in the rapid detectionof Salmonella spp. The core technology in the VETPODis a ready-to-use cartridge that included an injection-molded polymerchip with pyramid-shaped optical structures embedded within the chip.These pyramid-shaped optical structures direct the incident light,due to total internal reflection (TIR), through the reaction chambersto the phototransistor. The VETPOD was validated against the ISO 6579-1reference method. A total of 310 samples were tested that included180 Salmonella spiked samples in 6 different meatcategories and 130 strains to determine the specificity. The overallresults were satisfactory, wherein the VETPOD had an acceptable sensitivity(96.51%) compared to the reference (98.81%) and near perfect agreementwith ISO 6579-1 with an overall Cohen's kappa of 0.94. Therelative level of detection (RLOD) for the VETPOD was 1.38 CFU/25g that was found to be 1.17 times higher than the reference. The VETPODshowed 98% precision for inclusivity and 100% precision for the exclusivitysamples. The VETPOD proved as a useful alternative to detect Salmonella spp. that can be adaptable to a broader spectrumof pathogens in future.

Automated summary

Accurate and rapid detection of pathogens in animal-origin foods is crucial for the One Health Action Plan of the EU. We developed a LAMP-based point-of-care device called VETPOD for detecting Salmonella spp. The VETPOD uses a unique cartridge with pyramid-shaped optical structures for light detection, achieving comparable results to the ISO 6579-1 reference method with high sensitivity (96.51%) and specificity.