Posted on 03/18/2020 2:49:46 PM PDT by LibWhacker
A test can see if a person has ever been infected, even if they had no symptoms. by Antonio Regalado Mar 18, 2020
How widespread is the new coronavirus? How many people get it and don’t even know? What is the actual death rate?
Those are some of the biggest questions that science doesn’t have the answers to. But a team at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City just developed the very test we need to tell us.
Their test, described in a preprint paper released today, looks for tell-tale antibodies to the coronavirus in people’s blood, and is similar to the most widely used type of test for HIV.
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Tests like this show whether a person's immune system has ever come in contact with the virus and could give an accurate picture of how many people have been infected, a figure disease modelers and governments urgently need to gauge how deep society’s shutdown needs to be.
The new coronavirus has killed more than 8,700 people, which is about 4% of the 214,000 confirmed cases, making for a shocking death rate.
But the real fatality rate among everyone infected by the virus is certainly lower, and possibly much lower. The reason epidemiologists can’t say for sure is they don’t know how many people are infected but never go to the hospital or even have symptoms. In essence, modelers are missing an accurate denominator of the death-rate calculation. Sign up for The Download — your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Also stay updated on MIT Technology Review initiatives and events? YesNo
That’s a huge problem for setting policy. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, writing March 17 in the publication STAT, argued that the true death rate could be less than that of the seasonal flu. If so, “draconian countermeasures” are being decided amidst an “evidence fiasco” of “utterly unreliable” data about how many people are infected.
Just this week, a report estimated that early in the outbreak only 1-in-5 to 1-in-10 of the actual infections were being documented documented.
Currently, the US and other countries are ramping up efforts to test people quickly. That diagnostic test, called PCR, looks directly for the genetic material of the virus in a nasal or throat swab. It tells people with worrisome flu symptoms what they need to know: Are they infected with the new coronavirus right now?
The new type of test asks a different question: Has a person’s body ever seen the germ at all, even months ago?
If someone has been exposed, their blood should be full of antibodies against the virus. It’s the presence, or absence, of such antibodies to the virus that the new test measures.
The Icahn team, led by virologist Florian Krammer, says the new test could help locate survivors, who could then donate their antibody-rich blood to people in ICUs to help boost their immunity.
What’s more, doctors, nurses, and health-care workers could learn if they’ve already been exposed. Those who have, assuming they are now immune, Krammer suggests, could safely rush to the front lines and perform the riskiest tasks—like intubating a person with the virus, without worrying about getting infected or bringing the disease home to their families
Other scientific centers, including in Singapore, also say they have antibody tests running as do some US companies selling products to researchers. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also says its is developing one.
To make their version, the Icahn team produced copies of the telltale “spike” protein on the virus’s surface. That protein is highly immunogenic, meaning that people’s bodies see it and start making antibodies that can lock onto it.
The test involves exposing a sample of blood to bits of the spike protein. If the test lights up, it means that you have the antibodies.
To check their test, the team inspected blood samples collected before Covid-19 came roaring out of China this year, as well as blood from three actual coronavirus cases. According to Krammer, the test can pick up the body’s response to infection “as early as three days post symptom onset.”
To learn the true extent of infections, the next step for researchers, in New York and elsewhere, will to carry out "serological surveys" in which they'll do the test on blood draws large numbers of people in an outbreak area. That may tell them exactly how many cases have gone unnoticed.
But it could be sometime before scientists learn the answer. Krammer says the effort to carry out a wider survey is "just starting."
I’ll wager the FDA will shoot down that test because they don’t want the public to know the answer to that specific question.
I think my son had it around Christmas and I was infected with a very mild case. And, supposedly, according to the “authorities” the virus had not yet made it here from China. I think that is a big fat BS lie!!!!!!!!!
The disease that you need a test to discern whether or not you have it. But learning you have it generally has no meaning except to further damage the economy.
I don’t think it needs FDA approval because it’s not a medical diagnostic test.
It’s a research tool.
The research will get done, but the media won’t report on it, they’ll be on to the next crisis that will bring Trump down.
Such a test would more useful sooner (like all of them), before too many people are infected and render the test moot.
MIT press release.
These tests to assay antibodies against the virus are good are straightforward to develop.
Still takes a fair amount of time.
They can be very high on false positives and it takes time to work out reliable conditions to minimize them.
Makes perfect sense.... now start cranking them out and distributing them.
What I don’t understand is how HIV is considered the cause of AIDS when all they test for are the antibodies. Yet with COVID they consider having the antibodies as proof you had it and your body defeated it?
cool! thanks for the post.
Seems to me this would be very useful for determining who can safely work with coronavirus patients or who really needs to isolate after exposure.
Mid January I had a very bad illness, different in nation, it absolutely wiped me out, extreme fatigue last 2 weeks, began with sore throat.
Nature, not nation
You can have antibodies and not win.
Book marking.
I agree. Also that British dude and his wife that chronicled their ChiComFlu experience from that cruise ship in Japan said that the 14 day thing is basically a joke. They figure it was more like a month...at best.
Looking at the numbers, that seems increasingly likely to me. Any reasonable estimate of the ratio of detected to undetected cases makes this pandemic seem much less formidable. The greatest problem we're facing is the overreaction.
Remember this book?
Count Dracula sues.......
because you can recover from Covid-19, but not from HIV.
re:Seems to me this would be very useful for determining who can safely work with coronavirus patients or who really needs to isolate after exposure.
***
absolutely.
it could also identify those who could donate plasma for treatment.
It might lead to you self-isolating to prevent spreading the disease. It might lead to you notifying people who have been around you that you have tested positive, so they should be tested themselves. It might lead to you telling your physician that you have tested positive, so he or she can take special precautions around you, and so you can obtain medications that have shown promise in treating COVID-19 infections, such as chloroquine and remdesivir.
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