A new “hypersensitivity” rapid test can tell if a patient has Covid or the flu

A new test developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, looks for both Coronavirus Influenza is an accuracy level comparable to the gold standard COVID test.

This test uses a fluorescent probe to look for antigens (proteins on the surface of viral molecules) that may belong to one of the diseases.

Because the symptoms of COVID and influenza are similar, such a fast and accurate test can help to quickly rule out one infection and confirm the other, making patients one of the unpleasant screenings. You just have to endure.

Also, from a public health perspective, it is necessary to confirm that someone is infected with influenza and to perform a negative test for Covid to quarantine people who are positive for influenza and to perform contact tracing to prevent outbreaks. You can be confident that there is no.

The new technology developed for this test may be applied in the future to simultaneously test for other illnesses.

Testing is one of the most difficult aspects of a pandemic, as researchers and healthcare professionals are similarly struggling to determine how many people are actually infected with the coronavirus.

And while thousands of car lines meandered from drive-in test sites during the COVID-19 fall and holiday surge in the United States, the prospect of taking Covid’s “Brain Scraper” test is almost compelling. Not.

People who currently test negative for Covid need to have a similar test again if they want to know if their symptoms are due to the flu.

According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), influenza has almost disappeared in the coronavirus pandemic this past season.

People who are generally separated from each other in enhanced hand washing, masking, and pandemics can be responsible for the dramatic reduction in influenza transmission.

However, experts also this year because many Americans generally skipped care for fear of being infected with COVID-19 or did not follow up on the flu diagnosis after being negative for the coronavirus. We suspect that cases of influenza are underestimated.

The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test for either Covid or influenza, which is generally accepted as the “gold standard,” is very accurate.

However, it can take several days for the patient to receive the results, and the test is expensive and difficult to use on a large scale.

Antigen testing is steadily gaining popularity as a faster and cheaper alternative to PCR. The PCR test looks for specific genetic material that matches the coronavirus, while the antigen test looks for proteins on the surface of the virus.

These tests are also commonly referred to as “rapid tests” because they can give the patient results in 15 minutes. Such a short time frame makes it easier for patients to act on their results.

However, widely used antigen tests are not as accurate as PCR. Due to the high rate of false negatives, people who receive a negative result on an antigen test are more likely to actually be infected with the coronavirus than those who receive a negative result on a PCR test.

New antigen test Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have addressed this accuracy issue and expanded the usefulness of the test by looking for coronaviruses and common influenza viruses at the same time.

Like other antigen and PCR tests, the UC Santa Cruz test begins with a nasal swab. This sample is then tested with a fluorescent reporter probe. This is a genetic material that fluoresces and “lights up” when a particular virus is identified.

For this test, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have developed a new molecule encoded to look for coronavirus and influenza virus antigens at the same time.

This special molecule shines bright enough so that the person managing the test can see it without additional equipment. Also, because the genetic material does not need to be amplified (copied many times), this test may give results as quickly as any other antigen test.

At the same time, this fluorescent molecule specifically binds to coronavirus and influenza proteins, allowing it to be identified with higher accuracy than other antigen tests. For this reason, researchers call their tests “ultra-sensitive.”

The test also has special colored markers to distinguish between the two viruses. If coronavirus is present, the test will show a green mark, and if influenza is present, the test will show a red mark.

This ability to distinguish between the two common viruses can be especially useful during the flu season.

COVID and influenza share similar symptoms. CDC lists 10 Common to both illnesses: fever, cough, shortness of breath, malaise, sore throat, nasal discharge, muscle aches, headache, vomiting, diarrhea.

In the United States, the 2020-2021 flu season is mild, but Past flu season He sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to the hospital. An estimated 61,000 people died during the particularly tough 2017-2018 flu season.

Using such tests can help doctors quickly diagnose patients with any of the common flu / COVID symptoms. This test can be useful in both hospitals and outpatient clinics.

The University of California Santa Cruz test is also very useful as a commercial product. Several rapid antigen tests are now available in pharmacy chains without the attention of a doctor. Imagine if you could go to your local CVS and have a test that tells you if you have COVID or the flu within 15 minutes.

This fluorescence technology may also help detect other viruses. In fact, when the pandemic occurred, researchers were originally developing this technology for the Zika virus.

“When we were allowed to return to the lab for essential research, my students started working in the lab themselves on the coronavirus test,” senior author Holger Schmidt said in a press release. I mentioned in. “Developing these tests from scratch was a heroic effort by my students. First shut down by a pandemic, then a wildfire broke out and the samples had to be evacuated to Stanford and shut down again. But they continued. ”