Point-of-Care Platform Based on Solid-Phase Fluorescence Filter Effect for Urinary Iodine Testing in Children and Pregnant Women

Iodine is an essential element that is used to make thyroid hormones. However, people usually ignore their iodine nutrition level, thus leading to a series of thyroid diseases, particularly in areas where medical resources are scarce. Thus, development of a portable, economical, and simple method for the detection of urinary iodine is of significant importance. Herein, a solid-phase fluorescence filter effect (SPFFE) induced by iodine was used to develop an SPFFE-based point-of-care testing (POCT) platform for the detection of urinary iodine by coupling with headspace sample introduction. This method can not only alleviate the matrix interference that occurred in the conventional inner filter effect (IFE) but also achieve high sensitivity. Furthermore, the urinary iodine (UI) POCT platform was developed through the integration of a sample pretreatment and fluorescence readout. This whole system costs less than US $20 and provides accurate temperature control and a portable fluorescence reading within 15-20 min. Compared to the traditional IFE-based assay, the SPFFE-based POCT platform allows the selective detection of iodine as low as 10 nM and has a linear range of 0.05-4 μM. In addition, it provides notable visualization from blue-violet to orange-red in the presence of iodine, which tends to indicate the iodine nutritional status of the human body. Eventually, the clinical applicability and feasibility of the UIPOCT platform as an early diagnostic test kit were confirmed by determining the iodine in urine samples from children and pregnant women.