San Diego company develops 10-minute Ebola test

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San Diego company develops 10-minute Ebola test

October 27, 2014
byEllina Abovian

SAN DIEGO — With a single prick and a single drop of blood, a San Diego company claims they can now detect if a patient has Ebola in less than 10 minutes.

The breakthrough technology is called “Ebola Plus,” a tool that can be used to detect Ebola on anyone, anywhere in the world.

“We can do that for a large number of tests simultaneously with just one drop of blood,” said Dr. Cary Gunn, Ph.D. and CEO and Genalyte.

Once blood is drawn, a silicon chip is used to detect the virus as blood flows over it.

Researchers at Genalyte have been working on the diagnostic tool for seven years, using it to test for various diseases, and only recently discovered it could also work to spot Ebola

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Currently, the FDA has only approved for P-C-R that can take two hours for results, compared to the Ebola Plus that can provide results in ten minutes.

Eric Thomas Duncan, the first American who died form the disease, had to wait several days for his diagnosis – by then, he had already spread it to two nurses.

“It’s a terrible situation, but we’ve been training for this and we think we can make a difference,” said Gunn.
The test can also simultaneously detect sicknesses like the flu and malaria, making it easier for administrators to rule our what could be mistaken for Ebola.

The FDA is currently evaluating the test; Gunn believes it will get approval within a few short months.
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Quick Ebola Test, Not Quarantine, Could Be Best Defense

Oct 13, 2014 by Tracy Staedter

It’s been coming up in just about every conversation I have about Ebola: why doesn’t the United States ban flights from Liberia or at least putting people into quarantine to determine whether or not they have the virus?

Both of those proposals have a humanitarian and economic cost that’s hard to overlook. Banning people from traveling to and from Liberia, as well as other affected countries such as Sierra Leone, would put the brakes on healthcare in the locations it’s needed most. And locking people into quarantine for the 21-day incubation period is not free. It’s a civil liberties question; plus it takes manpower, money and time. Not ideal.

But in an opinion-piece for the NY Times, Siddhartha Mukherjee, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia and the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, suggests that a test involving polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., could work well. The test involves a blood sample from a person, which then undergoes a chemical reaction to amplify genetic information, including that belonging to the virus.

Mukherjee estimates that a P.C.R.-based technique would cost between $60 and $200, quite a bit less than quarantining someone. And he points out that Texas health officials spent 100 times more than that disposing of the contaminated sheets from the home Thomas Eric Duncan, the first US-based Ebola patient to die.

And because the test results come back “in about a third of the time of a trans-Atlantic flight, the flight would become the quarantine.”

The test is not 100 percent conclusive. It’s been known to give out a small number of false positives and negatives. But those numbers are fairly low overall.

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[Care4all]

AWESOME! Gosh....ya gotta love medical research and development AND capitalism, in THIS case!

 

[Star]

AWESOME! Gosh....ya gotta love medical research and development AND capitalism, in THIS case!

Yep!

And our media is attempting to scare the crap out of us, and some of our politicians are catapulting that propaganda.

Ron Paul no longer has a dog in the political hunt and-----and he's a MD. My question is why the panic now, Ebola's been around for over forty years - if anyone has ever caught Ebola in the United States then died, I can't find a record of it on the internet. OTOH Rand Paul and other mostly rightwing politicians want to scare us, but why, what's their motivation?

Our media and politicians are using scare tactics to draw attention to themselves. Scientists are using Ebola to catapult their work on a cure.

Even Ron Paul Thinks Rand's Ebola Travel Ban Is 'Politically Motivated' And Has No 'Medical Purpose'

By David October 20, 2014

When it comes to dealing with Ebola in the United States, former Congressman Ron Paul (R) and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), don't see eye to eye.

In an interview with Fox News radio host John Gibson last week, Rand Paul argued that a ban on people traveling from west African "ought to be considered."

"It's not like AIDS," he explained. "AIDS is difficult to transmit. You're not going to go into a cocktail party and have someone cough and get AIDS. If you are in a cocktail party with someone with Ebola and they cough, you are at risk for getting Ebola."

The Kentucky senator said that a "temporary hiatus on flights" was "only reasonable."
But as BuzzFeed pointed out on Monday, Ron Paul urged people to put the situation in "perspective."

"For a government to just ban all travel, I'm not much interested in that," the former Republican presidential candidate told Newsmax.

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Ron Paul, who is a medical doctor, pointed out that an estimated 3,000 to 49,000 people died every year from influenza, but no one was considering a travel ban to stop the flu from spreading.

"So right now, I would say a travel ban is politically motivated more than something done for medical purposes," he concluded.
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[Care4all]

I can not believe that NO ONE ELSE has replied to this thread and applauded the EXCELLENT AND AWESOME news on this!!!!

 

[LoneLaugher]

I can not believe that NO ONE ELSE has replied to this thread and applauded the EXCELLENT AND AWESOME news on this!!!!

It's good news. We don't have many people here who dig good news.