(6 October, 2016) Italian research for patients who suffer from epilepsy. In the hospital of Maputo, Mozambique only one doctor is available to treat 3,000 epileptic patients. The Polytechnic of Milan along with the Hamamatsu Photonics society have devised an easy-to-use and portable diagnostic device that will allow for a quicker and less invasive blood monitoring of the most commonly used anti-epilepsy drug in the country: Carbamazepine. The availability of this instrument will allow doctors to better treat their patients and will allow the possibility to tailor the dosage to each patient based on their response. A note from the Polytechnic communicates that today tests require a long time to produce results and do not allow for a quick evaluation of the effect of the drug. Doctors who specialise in epilepsy will therefore be able to propose better treatments for the patient, given the brief time between the blood sample and the test results. The new dosage method will drastically reduce the quantity of blood required from the patient to one single drop (50 microliters). (red)
