Elevated blood ammonia (hyperammonemia) may cause delirium, brain damage, and even death. Effective treatments exist, but preventing permanent neurological sequelae requires rapid, accurate, and serial measurements of blood ammonia. Standard methods require volumes of 1 to 3 mL, centrifugation to isolate plasma, and a turn-around time of 2 h. Collection, handling, and processing requirements mean that community clinics, particularly those in low resource settings, cannot provide reliable measurements. We describe a method to measure ammonia from small-volume whole blood samples in 2 min. The method alkalizes blood to release gas-phase ammonia for detection by a fuel cell. When an inexpensive first-generation instrument designed for 100 μL of blood was tested on adults and children in a clinical study, the method showed a strong correlation (R² = 0.97) with an academic clinical laboratory for plasma ammonia concentrations up to 500 μM (16 times higher than the upper limit of normal). A second-generation hand-held instrument designed for 10–20 μL of blood showed a near-perfect correlation (R² = 0.99) with healthy donor blood samples containing known amounts of added ammonium chloride up to 1000 μM. Our method can enable rapid and inexpensive measurement of blood ammonia, transforming diagnosis and management of hyperammonemia.

中文翻译：

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使用气相传感器对血氨进行现场护理分析。

血氨升高（高氨血症）可能引起ir妄，脑部损伤甚至死亡。存在有效的治疗方法，但要预防永久性神经后遗症，需要快速，准确和连续的血氨测量。标准方法需要1到3毫升的体积，离心分离血浆，周转时间为2小时。收集，处理和处理要求意味着社区诊所，尤其是资源匮乏的社区诊所，无法提供可靠的测量结果。我们描述了一种在2分钟内测量少量全血样本中氨的方法。该方法使血液碱化以释放气相氨，以供燃料电池检测。当在临床研究中对成人和儿童测试价格便宜的用于100μL血液的第一代仪器时，该方法显示出很强的相关性（R ² = 0.97），并具有学术临床实验室的血浆氨气浓度，最高可达500μM（比正常上限高16倍）。设计用于10–20μL血液的第二代手持式仪器显示出与健康供体血液样品的近乎完美的相关性（R ² = 0.99），其中包含已知数量的添加至1000μM的氯化铵。我们的方法可以快速，廉价地测量血氨，从而改变高氨血症的诊断和管理。