A gold nanoparticles-based colorimetric test to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms for improvement of personalized therapy of psoriasis

We report a simple, rapid and low-cost test, based on gold nanoparticles, for the naked-eye colorimetric detection of a signature of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) relevant for the personalized medicine of psoriasis patients. We validated the colorimetric assay on real-world DNA samples from a cohort of 30 psoriasis patients and we compared the results, in double-blind, with those obtained with two state-of-the-art instrumental techniques, namely reverse dot blotting and direct sequencing, finding 100% agreement. We demonstrated high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the colorimetric test that can be easily adapted for the genotypization of different SNPs, important for the pharmacogenomics of various diseases, and in other fields, such as food traceability and population structure analysis.