A manually driven centrifugal microfluidic LAMP platform for rapid visual detection of waterborne pathogens in aquatic sports

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A manually driven centrifugal microfluidic LAMP platform for rapid visual detection of waterborne pathogens in aquatic sports

Scientific Reports , Article number:  (2025) Cite this article

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Abstract

The increasing prevalence of aquatic sports presents significant public health concerns due to the risk of infections from waterborne pathogens. Conventional detection methods are often labor intensive, rely on sophisticated laboratory instrumentation, and are inadequate for meeting the urgent demand for onsite, point-of-care testing (POCT). This study reports the development and validation of an integrated POCT platform. The system incorporates three core modules: (1) an instrument-free, syringe-actuated device for simple nucleic acid extraction; (2) a PMMA microfluidic chip enabling uniform sample distribution to multiple reaction chambers via manual centrifugation; and (3) a visual, pH indicator-based loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay. The primers and reaction chemistries were systematically optimized for pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus and Shigella flexneri. The developed platform enables a sample-to-answer workflow in approximately 60 min, with an analytical limit of detection of 10–100 copies per reaction. Notably, the microfluidic chip platform showed enhanced performance compared to conventional tube-based assays in both sensitivity and stability, particularly yielding more robust results for low-titer samples. Furthermore, the simplified extraction method achieved a recovery efficiency for gram-negative bacteria comparable to that of commercial kits, while noting differences in efficiency for gram-positive strains. The integrated platform exhibited high specificity and robustness against interferents in simulated contaminated water. This work demonstrates a user-friendly, cost-effective, and fully integrated platform for the visual detection of multiple pathogens, requiring only a portable heating module for its entire operation. The platform not only offers a viable technical solution for onsite safety monitoring in aquatic sports but also validates the concept of “backend compensation”: a well-designed detection module can help offset the performance loss from simplified frontend sample preparation. This philosophy provides valuable insights for developing reliable POCT systems destined for real-world, resource-limited settings.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article. The raw datasets used for generating the figures and tables are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Youchun Xu (School of Medicine, Tsinghua University) for his invaluable guidance on the microfluidic chip design and BioGDP.com for its user-friendly platform for figure creation.

Funding

This work was supported by the Emerging Interdisciplinary Platform for Medicine and Engineering in Sports (EIPMES).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, Beijing, 100191, China

    YanJing Chen, LinXiao Wu, WangXin Ding, ZhenHe Dong & Yan Zhang

Authors

  1. YanJing Chen
  2. LinXiao Wu
  3. WangXin Ding
  4. ZhenHe Dong
  5. Yan Zhang

Contributions

YJ.C conceived and designed the experiment, and was the principal investigator of this study. LX.W conducted the LAMP method optimization experiments. ZH.D was responsible for sample collection and nucleic acid extraction efficiency comparison. WX.D assisted with manuscript preparation. Y.Z supervised the project and provided overall guidance. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Zhang.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Chen, Y., Wu, L., Ding, W. et al. A manually driven centrifugal microfluidic LAMP platform for rapid visual detection of waterborne pathogens in aquatic sports. Sci Rep (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-32092-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-32092-w