A USB Stick Can Show HIV Test Results In Under 30 Minutes (qz.com) 52
Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a USB stick that can measure the presence and amount of HIV in a person's blood in under 30 minutes and with 95% accuracy. The USB stick should help make testing easier in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV is a serious problem and where many people live in rural regions hours or days travel away from hospitals or clinics. Also, traditional HIV testing can take days to show results, whereas the USB stick can show results in minutes. Quartz reports: The new diagnostic tool, co-created by the university and biotech company DNA Electronics, requires simply putting a single drop of blood onto a designated spot on the USB stick. The device contains a mechanism that can detect if there's any HIV genetic material -- RNA -- in the drop of blood, and if so, how much. Then, when the stick is connected to a laptop or handheld device, the data are automatically delivered to an app where the patient can quickly read his or her results. One of the most effective HIV treatments currently, called anti-retroviral treatment, reduces virus levels to near zero. However, in some cases, the virus may develop a resistance to medication or therapy, causing the virus to resurface. To catch such developments early, patients can use the devices for monitoring purposes. "The disposable test could be used by HIV patients to monitor their own treatment and help patients in remote regions of the world, where more standard HIV tests are inaccessible," the authors of the study write. For now, it's still in the proof-of-concept stage, and years away from hitting the market.
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You dumb fuck.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/me... [medpagetoday.com]
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I've had constant mod points for about 10 days and then when the site goes to shit and fills with trolls (who then mod good posts as troll) I get no mod points. Typical.
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Actually, we have had simple paper test strips for over 15 years in this country, but the gay community has kept them from being widely distributed because they claim to fear discriminatory reprisals if HIV tests were readily available to the public.
How absurd! Rapid HIV tests are widely available at health clinics and STD testing centres across North America. Within 1 minute you get a result that has 99.7% sensitivity and 99.98% specificity. In cases where a positive is detected, it can be followed up with a more accurate lab-based blood test.
Sexual and gender minorities are great advocates for making HIV testing faster, easier, and more reliable, so please keep your bigoted nonsense to yourself.
Under the gop system 30 min to get black listed (Score:2)
Under the gop system 30 min to get black listed for life.
prsion is a lifestyle choice but DR covers more t (Score:2)
prison is a lifestyle choice but DR covers more then the ER does and they don't ask how are you going to pay for this.
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Be careful with that USB stick (Score:2, Funny)
It might have a virus.
Re: beta testers (Score:1)
As a straight male who lives in Austin, I say that's fine with us. As long as bigots like you stay under your rocks we'll be just fine.
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^---- And this attitude is why Trump succeeded. Congrats. (If you're not in New York or LA, you an "uneducated white male").
I've heard the "uneducated white male" meme probably 5000x times on CNN in just two days. Let me give you a clue. 74% of the electorate is white. When you throw racial nonsense around, what do you expect is going to happen in the election?
DNAe has pedigree (Score:3, Informative)
For edification, DNAe actually has some merit. They're a London based company and developed the technology behind the Ion Torrent DNA sequencer that is sold by Thermo Fisher. The Ion Torrent is a valid machine, although not quite as good as the MiSeq from Illumina. It works by breaking DNA up and the hydrogen ions released create a measurable signal alteration on the silicon FETs; the chemistry invovled is astounding to make it go where you want and sequence stuff.
https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/brands/ion-torrent.html
This appears to be a miniaturization of the technology. Viruses, particularly RNA viruses, have a lot fewer genes to work with; HIV only has 9 genes as compared to the human genome which has around 25,000. Since you don't need as much processing power it's conceivable you could miniaturize the Ion Torrent technology for a smaller target like HIV viral RNA.
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It's more the AMA than Republicans. They want test to be unreliable and expensive. Last time o had viral pneumonia, I ended up on the hospital and in a medically induced coma before they would help me.
Yeah, bad stuff like that always seems to happen to ACs. Amazing how much your life gets better when you log in.
USB's made in China (Score:2)
Here we go again... (Score:3)
It has "a mechanism" to detect RNA...but only one specific kind of RNA? They didn't come up with a broader approach to detect, say, many kinds of viruses? And it's so commoditizable that it's a USB stick?
*cough*Theranos*cough*
95% accuracy in which direction (Score:1)
95% accurate with the other 5% in favour of false positive (falsely showing you have HIV) would probably be a lot better than mistakenly telling you that you don't have HIV.
If somebody uses the stick and gets the HIV+ reading, then hopefully he/she will go in for a more accurate test. Getting the all-clear for somebody actually is infected could result in some pretty bad outcomes though.
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If somebody uses the stick and gets the HIV+ reading, then hopefully he/she will go in for a more accurate test.
You probably have to take a more accurate test to get a prescription for antiretrovirals. Not sure if the voodoo doctor requires it though
Where is my USB port? (Score:2)
I like the idea of a USB stick that can reveal my HIV status. However, I have two questions about how this works:
Inquiring minds want to know.
Dispose? (Score:1)
Good up until "disposable test".
That's not so good.
We don't need more disposable junk.
We don't need the high cost either.
It should be rinsed and reusable.
Shame on them.
need 2 accuracy percentages not one (Score:2)
need to know both false positive and false negative surely?
If most people don't have HIV and people without HIV are correctly told that 95% of the time, that means there are shit loads of people being incorrectly told they have HIV
If it's a USB stick... (Score:2)
Then why should the results be read through an app? Once results are found maybe it should produce some commonly readable files as the USB stick is mounted as a drive, allowing you to view say a PDF, TXT, HTML, and PNG of the results, allowing it to be read on any device in whatever format is most convenient. Why tie this to an app that may or may not be updated or even currently supported on the given OS?
that is SO much better than a condom (Score:1)
Distribute Them Everywhere (Score:2)