- Coronavirus testing is essential to identify new cases as quickly as possible, but also to help with herd immunity studies and future vaccine research.
- A team of scientists in Australia developed an antibody test that can deliver a positive or negative result in as little as 20 minutes.
- The result is visible to the naked eye, and the test can be used to detect patients who recently became infected, as well as patients who survived COVID-19.
Testing for the new coronavirus remains a problem, although it is not as bad as it was in the first months of the pandemic. Test rates have increased significantly, but further testing is needed to find the most dangerous type of COVID-19 patient: the asymptomatic spreader. Some politicians, Trump in particular, think that the increased evidence is what’s causing the increase. But that is obviously ridiculous. Without sustained community outreach, the percentage of positive results would be very low as the volume of testing increases.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, recent reports have shown that some labs are already overwhelmed and results can take up to a week to arrive. That is too long. Australian researchers developed a new blood test that can offer a positive or negative diagnosis of COVID-19 in as little as 20 minutes. The test can also be used in a variety of situations. It can detect people who have just been infected, as well as people who have already expired COVID-19. Crucially, it can also be used in the coronavirus vaccine and other drug trials to determine if the drugs work or not.
The blood test is described as “the world’s first research” by Monash University, which led the study. As you may already suspect, the fact that it involves blood means that we are looking at an antibody test, which means that the test has some shortcomings. For example, it will not detect an active COVID-19 infection until the antibodies begin to circulate in the bloodstream, which can take a few days. Also, it might not work in patients who survived COVID-19 several months ago, as recent research says that the antibodies may start to disappear two to three months after recovery.
But a rapid antibody test can deliver a response in as little as 20 minutes, so it can be used to boost antibody tests in communities experiencing a sudden surge in cases. It could also be done to help with contact tracing and vaccine distribution.
Australian scientists created an agglutination test, which is a test that determines the presence and amount of a substance in the blood. In this case, they are antibodies. The researchers say the simple lab setup would allow doctors to test up to 200 blood samples per hour, and hospitals running high-grade diagnostic machines are capable of processing 700 blood samples per hour.
The scientists mixed reactive red blood cells (RRBCs) with short peptides from pieces of the coronavirus tip protein and with serum or plasma containing antibodies. If the patient had developed antibodies, they would bind to the virus fragments and the aggregation of red blood cells would be visible to the naked eye. In negative responses, no such chemical reaction would be observed.
“We found that by producing bioconjugates of anti-D-IgG and peptides from the SARS-CoV-2 tip protein, and immobilizing them to the RRBCs, selective agglutination was observed on gel cards in the plasma collected from patients recently infected with SARS-CoV-2 compared to healthy plasma and negative controls, “said BioPRIA director Professor Gil Garnier. “Importantly, negative control reactions involving SARS-CoV-2 or RRBC negative samples and SARS-CoV-2 positive samples without bioconjugates did not reveal any agglutination behavior.”
That’s a crucial detail about the test, considering that the world has been dealing with a major coronavirus antibody testing problem. Lack of certification for such products leads to a large number of antibody tests, but several tests gave false results.
The following video shows the team that worked on the new test technology, while the full study detailing the new antibody test is available at this link.
Chris Smith began writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it, he was sharing his views on technology topics with readers around the world. Every time you don’t write about devices, you unfortunately don’t stay away from them, even though you desperately try. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
.
