ll you’ve got to do is offer a single drop of blood and this new blood test will tell you the type of viruses you have encountered in your lifetime. Revolutionary, isn’t it?
This breakthrough diagnostic tool can help doctors detect earlier new diseases like hepatitis B and to provide new perceptions in the origin of auto-immune diseases like cancers, the team who developed the blood test said.
The test, dubbed as VirScan uses genome-charting technology to reveal the types of viruses that had invaded the body during one person’s life history.
The new blood test which is DNA-based screens the blood for antibodies which the immune system produced when viruses attacked the body. Researchers detected all antibodies of the 206 types of viruses that usually trouble humans.
The secret of VirScan’s efficiency lies in the immune system’s custom of tossing out antibodies versus a virus long after the virus and the infection were eradicated.
The new DNA-based blood test is dramatically claimed by Scientists to be more comprehensive and accurate compared to traditional blood screening testing, as the latter only provides a single virus diagnosis.
“It has the potential to reveal viruses people have encountered recently or many years earlier. Thus, this is a powerful new research tool,” Prof. Ian Lipkin of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, who is not a contributor to the blood test development, noted.
Also, about 570 patients from 4 continents, were tested with the VirScan by the research team. On the average, a person’s body is invaded by 10 to 260 different multiplicity of viruses, though some people have twice that number.
Researchers discovered that some viruses are more common during adulthood, while HIV sufferers have antibodies against more viruses as compared to their healthier counterpart.
VirScan’s is approximately priced at $25 for every blood extraction, but some laboratories might charge the patient higher. It also takes 2 to 3 days to complete the test results on 100 blood samples.