Nucleic acid testing for point-of-care using:advances in technologies and future perspectives

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is expanding rapidly worldwide due to its simplicity and rapid testing.At present, POCT has mainly focused on detection of proteins (antigen/antibody) and small molecules based on immunological assay and dry chemical technology.In the past decade, rapid diagnostic assays for nucleic acid have quickly progressed.Some nucleic acid-based POCT products have been developed and approved by US FDA.Now this article discusses the advances in the field of rapid nucleic acid testing including some new technologies and their applications.As a new area of in vitro diagnostics, POCT for nucleic acid is worthy of our attention.（Chin J Lab Med，2014,37：824-827） Key words: Point-of-care system; Polymerase chain reaction; Nucleic acids; Sequence analysis