US: Successfully developed new blood testing method

American scientists have just successfully developed a new blood test method called VirScan, which can identify most of the viruses a person has been exposed to over many years with just one test.

Illustration photo. (Source: medicaldaily.com)

The study was published in the US journal Science on June 4. Compared to the current popular blood testing method such as ELISA, which can only detect one pathogen in one test, VirScan is an effective and fast method, and in particular, the cost of testing using this method is quite reasonable, only 25 USD.

To achieve this, American scientists built a "virus library" consisting of protein sequences from more than 1,000 different viruses known to science, thereby serving as a basis for identifying the viruses that infected patients.

The team then conducted blood tests on 600 people in different countries on different continents, including Peru, the United States, South Africa, and Thailand, based on this database. The results after one test showed that most of these people were exposed to about 10 different viruses, and at least two people had been infected with 84 viruses.

In addition, through this experiment, the researchers also discovered that some antibodies produced by the body's immune system when encountering viruses are very common in the body of adults, but are not present in the body of young children. Therefore, they believe that young children have not been exposed to these viruses.

Normally, doctors diagnose and ask patients to undergo tests to find a certain virus, said study leader Stephen Elledge of Brigham and Women's Hospital.

However, VirScan can produce results for many different types of viruses, even strange viruses, so this method will help scientists have new hypotheses and a broader view of the interaction between the human body's immune system and viruses.

The team believes that VirScan's accuracy will improve with more blood samples and that in the future the method could be used to test for bacteria, fungi, or protozoans.

According to Vietnam+