Resource "Test unravels history of infection" By Jonathan Ball BBC News

[JennyJenny]

JennyJenny submitted a new resource:

"Test unravels history of infection" By Jonathan Ball BBC News - US researchers claim to have developed a single test that is able to identify past exposure to every

The technique decodes the infection history imprinted in our immune response.
The scientists hope that the test will eventually provide important insight into how viruses contribute to development of a range of diseases.
The work was published in the journal Science.

Read more about this resource...

 

[JennyJenny]

From Article:
"However, it will be a fabulous tool for looking at virus-disease associations which are speculative, or even currently unknown. For example, primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) has been reported, controversially, to arise from viral infection, so it would be great to compare the virome of PBC patients with those without the disease. Maybe you'd identify a consistent pattern suggesting a specific viral cause."

 

[Merry]

Suzanne Vernon has posted on her facebook page that she contributed to this research by providing blood samples from ME/CFS patients in the Solve ME/CFS Initiative biobank: "It was so fun to work with this remarkable team on this really cool approach to test for more than 200 viruses (and more than 1,000 virus strains!) in a drop of blood. Blood from ME/CFS patients was included along with blood samples from around the world. George Xu, Steve Elledge and I will continue to dive into the data to see if there are virus patterns unique to ME/CFS."

She includes a link to an article in The New York Times about the research (nothing in the article about ME/CFS or her or Solve ME/CFS Initiative biobank, though):

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/h...st-for-all-virus-exposures.html?smid=fb-share

 

[Merry]

More interesting details on the research are provided in this post at Virology Blog:

http://www.virology.ws/2015/06/04/your-viral-past/

"This method was used to assay samples from 569 humans. The results show that each person had been exposed to an average of 10 viruses, with a range from a few to over 20 (two individuals had antibodies to 84 different virus species!). The most frequently identified viruses included herpesviruses, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus, and enteroviruses. The overall winner, found in 88% of samples, is Epstein-Barr virus."

 

[Cort]

Technology is moving forward all the time!

Here's a video of the guy explaining it.

 

[Cort]

Here's what Lipkin said about it

""The approach is clever and a technological tour de force," said Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, who was not involved in the creation of VirScan. "It has the potential to reveal viruses people have encountered recently or many years earlier ... Thus, this is a powerful new research tool."

It's a remarkably cheap test as well!

Elledge said the VirScan analysis currently can be performed for about $25 per blood sample, though labs might charge much more than that if the test becomes commercially available. He also said it currently takes two or three days to process and sequence about 100 samples, though that speed could increase as technology improves.

 

[Cort]

Vincent Racaniello loves it as well

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...test-can-tell-you-every-virus-youve-ever-had/

Ultimately, Elledge said he hopes the test could be used to more quickly detect conditions, such as HIV and hepatitis C, which patients can carry for years before displaying any outward symptoms. Experts believe VirScan also could lead to insights about the role long-ago viral infections play in the later development of certain cancers and autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

"There are a lot of chronic diseases where we think a virus might be involved, but we can't quite pinpoint it ... Right now we can't quite make the connection," said Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia, who was not involved in developing VirScan. "I think this is really going to be helpful. It's very cool."

Racaniello said he envisions a day when patients will get the VirScan test as part of a regular checkup.