Over a million people each year, most of them in the "meningitis belt" in Africa, contract bacterial meningitis, a potentially deadly infection of tissues that line the brain and spinal cord. The ...

Taking a page from home-pregnancy tests, scientists have designed a dipstick that can detect traces of cocaine or other drugs in a person's bodily fluids. Researchers from the University of Illinois ...

Simple paper-strip testing has the potential to tell us quickly what's in water, and other liquid samples from food, the environment and bodies—but current tests don't handle solid samples well. Now ...

March 15, 2010 — Routine dipstick urinalysis screening for chronic kidney disease (CKD) has little clinical value and is not cost-effective, according to the results of a study analyzing data on ...

Lateral flow assays (LFAs, often called "dipsticks") have been a standard point-of-care testing platform for decades, and keep growing in popularity, especially in developing countries. These ...

The mosquito-borne viruses, Zika and dengue fever, plague developing countries around the world. Dengue can cause hemorrhagic fever, and Zika can lead to devastating congenital neurological defects.

Scientists have developed a urine diagnostic to detect the parasitic worms that cause river blindness, also called onchocerciasis, a tropical disease that afflicts 18 to 120 million people worldwide.