Portable Electrochemical Platform With Carbon Fibre Microelectrodes Integrated on an OHP Sheet for Snake Venom Analysis

Snake bite is a serious medical emergency often leading to untimely fatalities. Serotherapy is the only treatment method adapted for this, whose efficacy depends on identification of the Snake species and venom type. As a specific antivenom has to be implicated for saving the victim, in most of the cases, such identification is challenging, thus, leading to mortality due to delay in treatment or side effects of injecting polymeric non-specific antivenom. Therefore, a point-of-care, venom specific detection device could be an impactful diagnostic tool. Herein, a prototype of miniaturized electrochemical sensing platform is presented for detection of Crotaline, venom from various common pit viper snakes. A three electrode based micro-platform with carbon fibre microelectrode, modified with mesoporous carbon, embedded and laminated in commercial OHP sheet, has been developed. The dimensions of the miniaturized platform was 25 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 35$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm, size of electrode was 0.5 mm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 25$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm with an electrochemical testing zone of diameter 10 mm, electrode spacing as 3 mm. The microscopic characterization revealed immobilization of porous carbon on fine fibrous structure. The device gave highly stable and sensitive electro-catalytic oxidation of Crotaline at E’= at 0.81 V, and provided a linear range of 50-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$300~{\mu }\text{M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, limit of detection as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$18.98~{\mu }\text{M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and limit of quantification as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$63~{\mu }\text{M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The device exhibited negligible interference from physiological blood serum biochemicals, high stability and reproducibility. Further, real blood serum samples, analysis via standard addition approach, was performed which showcased appreciable recovery values confirming the practical applicability of the device.