Written By: Longjam Dineshwori | Updated : July 21, 2020 11:44 AM IST
This new blood test may be used to confirm vaccine efficacy during clinical trials.
Contact tracing, which is the process of identification of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person, is believed to be the best way to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus until there's a vaccine. But it can be effective only if testing is fast, suggested a study recently published in The Lancet Public Health journal. The study authors concluded that reducing the time between a person developing symptoms and receiving a test result is important for improving contact tracing effectiveness. This calls for a rapid testing method to identify COVID-19 patients. Here is the good news researchers at Monash University in Australia have developed a blood test that can detect the virus in just 20 minutes. They were able to identify recent COVID-19 cases using 25 microlitres of plasma from blood samples.
The study is led by BioPRIA and Monash University's Chemical Engineering Department and includes researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent BioNano Science and Technology (CBNS). The new blood test uses a simple agglutination assay to detect the presence of antibodies raised in response to the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Agglutination or clustering of red blood cells, which is easily identifiable to the naked eye, indicates a positive COVID-19 result. It takes about 20 minutes to retrieve positive or negative readings.
The current swab / PCR tests can only identify people who are currently positive with COVID-19. The agglutination assay can determine if you had been infected with the virus in the past and developed antibodies against it. The researchers believe that this test can aid clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine as it can help detect antibodies raised in response to vaccination.
This discovery could enable medical practitioners across the world to test up to 200 blood samples an hour in a simple lab setup, the researchers said. In hospitals with high-grade diagnostic machines, it would enable testing of more than 700 blood samples an hour which is about 16,800 per day, they added.
Such a rapid COVID-19 testing method could enable high-risk countries to conduct population screening, case identification, contact tracing, confirming vaccine efficacy during clinical trials, and vaccine distribution.
This breakthrough research was published on Friday (July 17, 2020) in the journal ACS Sensors. The developers have already filed a patent for this innovative testing method. Meanwhile, they are seeking commercial and government support to upscale production.
If you think blood tests would be painful, there is a non-invasive, painless way to test COVID-19 infection. The novel testing method, developed by pharmacists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), uses gargle samples instead of swab or blood samples.
The new method, which uses mass spectrometry, measures the proteins of the virus, not the genetic material. According to the researchers, the test is highly specific for the virus since the corresponding proteins are only present in SARS-CoV-2. This testing method can be used in the early stages of the disease when many viruses are present in the mouth and throat, they said.
Professor Andrea Sinz, a mass spectrometry expert at the Institute of Pharmacy at MLU, said that this method can complement the current PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test. Currently, it takes about 15 minutes to get the testing result, but Sinz said they trying to further reduce the analysis time using artificially produced virus components. However, it will take a few months to be available for public use.
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