Rapid, user-friendly, and inexpensive detection of azidothymidine.

Strict adherence to Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) is very important to improve quality of life for HIV-positive patients to reduce new infections and determine treatment success. Azidothymidine (AZT) is an antiretroviral drug commonly used in HAART treatment. In this research, an “add, mix and measure” assay was developed to detect AZT within minutes. Three different probes designed to release fluorophores when samples containing AZT are added, were synthesized and characterized. The limit of detection to AZT in simulated urine samples was determined to be 4 μM in 5 minutes for one of the probes. This simple and rapid point-of-care test could potentially be used by clinicians and health care workers to monitor the presence of AZT in low resource settings.

严格坚持高效抗逆转录病毒疗法（HAART）对于提高艾滋病病毒阳性患者的生活质量、减少新感染以及确定治疗成功与否非常重要。齐多夫定（AZT）是高效抗逆转录病毒疗法中常用的一种抗逆转录病毒药物。在这项研究中，开发了一种“添加、混合和测量”的检测方法，可在数分钟内检测到齐多夫定。合成并表征了三种不同的探针，当加入含有齐多夫定的样品时，这些探针会释放荧光团。其中一种探针在模拟尿液样本中对齐多夫定的检测限在5分钟内被确定为4微摩尔。这种简单快速的即时检测方法有可能被临床医生和医护人员用于在资源匮乏的环境中监测齐多夫定的存在情况。