New Medical Test Can Diagnose Any Viral Infection

Medicine  

Before physicians can treat an ailment, they need to properly diagnose it. This can be particularly tricky with some illnesses, considering there are a lot of overlapping symptoms at times. A new medical tool called the ViroCap may change all of that.

Before physicians can treat an ailment, they need to properly diagnose it. This can be particularly tricky with some illnesses, considering there are a lot of overlapping symptoms at times. However, a new medical tool called the ViroCap may change all of that.

The ViroCap test can identify just about any type of viral infection patients may be suffering from, allowing doctors to correctly diagnose patients even when they don’t have any clues or ideas as to what to search for.

The Lowdown on the ViroCap

A study published in the Genome Research journal discusses the ViroCap test in detail. It can detect any virus with the capability of infecting humans or animals, from common to rare. That includes the full spectrum of deadly outbreaks, including Marburg virus, Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and more common outbreaks such as rotavirus and even norovirus.

What’s more interesting is the test can detect individual strains of viruses. Taking that one step further, it can even detect when someone is suffering from multiple viruses simultaneously. The latter point is important because there is currently no other test that can do such a thing.

But just how accurate is the ViroCap test? Currently, viruses are diagnosed using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. Apparently, the ViroCap test has been reported to be 52 percent more accurate than the PCR testing method. That’s a big deal since the PCR test is the current industry “gold standard.”

Accurate but Unavailable

The author of the study, Todd Wylie, confirms the ViroCap test is remarkably accurate. He says, "The test is so sensitive that it also detects variant strains of viruses that are closely related genetically. Slight genetic variations among viruses often can't be distinguished by currently available tests and complicate physicians' ability to detect all variants with one test."

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Sadly, this tool won’t be available to doctors for quite some time, maybe even longer than a few years. As it stands, it’s only been tested in a lab. Researchers are trying to increase the accuracy of the test and prove it works by putting it through a series of clinical trials. This will allow them to determine whether or not the ViroCap test will actually be effective in real-world scenarios.

The test was announced in a press release by Dr. Gregory Storch, a pediatrics professor at Washington University, who is part of the team working on the toolkit.

Storch and his team of researchers plan to expand support for the ViroCap test so that it can also detect other pathogens, fungi and even bacteria. In other words, they’re hoping it will be the ultimate diagnostic test at some point in the near future.

Aiming at Universal Availability

As soon as the rigorous testing is complete, the university will make the technology publicly available. That means all clinics, research centers and hospitals around the world will have access to the toolkit.

Without such a tool, doctors have a difficult time detecting viruses because they are much smaller in size when compared to things like microbes and bacteria. While higher-sensitivity tests have been available for diseases like latent tuberculosis for a while, ViroCap could bring this technology to other diseases as well.

Many of today’s tests are wholly specific, which means the doctors must know what they are looking for before they even run a diagnostic test. If they are unsure or identify the wrong symptoms, then there’s a high probability they may never diagnose the appropriate virus.

The Ebola virus, for example, requires an incredibly specific and expensive — it costs some $1,000 — test to detect its presence. Physicians have been looking for a more efficient and cost-effective solution for some time now.

Hopefully, the ViroCap can also cut down on such a waiting period. It would be a great tool for the medical community.

By Kayla Matthews

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Author Bio - Kayla Matthews is a technology journalist and blogger, as well as editor of ProductivityBytes.com. Follow Kayla on Facebook and Twitter to read all of her latest posts.