Fabrication of multiple LFIA strips with ZrO2@PEI-QDs nanosphere composites for rapid differentiation of acute aortic dissection and acute myocardial infarction

Typical symptoms of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and acute aortic dissection (AAD) are similar chest pain, leading to higher clinical misdiagnosis rate, evenly the mortality rate of patients. In this work, ZrO2@PEI-QDs nanospheres with higher fluorescence were prepared by sequential electrostatic adsorption of branched PEI chains and CdSe/ZnS-COOH QDs on hollow ZrO2 nanospheres. Three multi-channel LFIA strips (on sST2 and cTnI, cTnI and h-FABP, HMGB1 and sST2, respectively) based on ZrO2@PEI-QDs for rapid and correct distinguishing of AMI and ADD were constructed. Their visual limit of detection (vLOD for sST2 and cTnI, cTnI and h-FABP, HMGB1 and sST2) within 10 15min reached 0.075 and 0.1ng/mL, 0.1 and 1ng/mL, 1 and 0.1ng/mL, respectively, which were all lower than the normal level of healthy people. Compared with previous studies, ZrO2 surface adsorbs more QDs, the fluorescence intensity was increased by about 2.84 times, and vLODs of three strips based on the quantitative fluorescence analysis were also increased by up to one orders of magnitude. The test results of five clinical serum samples indicated that three multi-channel LFIA strips could quantitatively detect four biomarkers of chest pain, and successfully distinguish AMI patients from AAD patients. These results indicated that this set of multi-channel LFIA strips could become an effective tool for the early and accurate detection or distinguish of ADD and AMI.