A short primer on primers
How do you find out quickly if someone is infected by a particular subtype? What you do is take samples from nasal and throat swabs, then try to find fragments of RNA from the virus in those specimens. To do that, you use primers which are short segments of nucleotides that are complementary to, and will bind with, the target regions of the RNA being tested (like the corresponding halves of a zipper) and then amplify the whole thing (using an enzyme called polymerase, hence the name polymerase chain reaction or PCR) to produce enough material for identification.
The primers act a bit like fish-hooks, to fish out the tiny fragments of RNA, except that they are very specific, ie you need to know the molecular sequence of the gene you are looking for, and have the correct corresponding sequence in the primer, to be able to give a positive test.
The problem is, with a novel virus, until they have fully sequenced it, you don’t really know that you have the right primers or fish-hooks to produce a positive test. Scientists might be able to make a good educated guess, and try different primers, but false negatives are fairly frequent.
Akld students show Swine Flu symptoms
Twenty-two students from Auckland’s Rangitoto College, may have been infected with the Swine Flu, which the World Health Organisation warn could start a global epidemic.
The students, believed to be senior students, arrived back to New Zealand via Los Angeles on Saturday, after a language trip to Mexico.
Up to six have been showing flu like symptoms, but the test results won’t be confirmed until Monday.
Three teachers also accompanied the students on the three week trip.
The group of students and teachers are remaining in home isolation until preliminary test results are known and advice has been given to the families regarding infection control precautions.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/akld-students-show-swine-flu-symptoms-2675117
Nasal swabs. Boy are those painful.
At the begining of April my husband and I came down with the flu here in SC. Neither of us had experienced such sickness. It was awful, we alternated between tylenol, advil and occassional aspirin to try to get the fevers down, for four days could only lower it to 100.
We were convinced we must have never “really” had the flu before if this was the flu. On what was his 3rd day and my first, we drug ourselves to a nearby clinic, they did a “flu swab”. The doc came back in the exam room a half hour later, really just opened the door (he wouldn’t step all the way in) and said you have the flu, go home.
He gave us a prescription but I don’t know what for, we drove to CVS to try to get it filled but they couldn’t do it right away and we could barely stay upright having been gone from home over two hours at that time so we just drove home without it.
Suffered with it for a total of 5-7 days and then went back to work. For the next two weeks we could barely talk, I’m still hoarse at the end of my third week. Got the clinic bill today and it just says flu type A or B.
All we know is it was the worst we’ve ever been sick.