Multiparametric miRNAs profiling by polymerization induced fluorescence-off amplification for acute myocardial infarction diagnosis

•Polymerization induced rapid signal amplification in ambient environment.•Miniaturized device developed for point-of-care applications.•Multiparametric and highly sensitive miRNAs analysis.•Promoted acute myocardial infarction diagnosis accuracy The prompt diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) for patients with acute ischemic-type chest pain is critical for timely AMI treatment and lowering its casualty rate. In this article, we developed a multiparametric detection technique for AMI related microRNAs (miRNAs), which is based on the polymerization induced fluorescence-off (PIFO) signal amplification technique. PIFO can be implemented on a specially designed microfluidic chip equipping a fluorescence sensor, which is able to profile 3 miRNAs simultaneously in 45 min with a detection limit of 6100 miRNAs copies. Comparing with other polymerization-based signal amplification techniques, PIFO is rapid, oxygen-independent, multiparametric, and can be performed in ambient environment. The miniaturized PIFO device can be further applied to analyze AMI related miRNAs in clinical serum samples, and displays excellent performance in distinguishing AMI patients from patients with other cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, PIFO shows a high accuracy for AMI diagnosis among patients with low hypersensitivity troponin I level (< 0.1 ng mL−1) as a result of the early and fast respond to AMI onset by miRNAs.