New Field Test Discerns Between Ebola and Lookalike Fevers

At the close of the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola crisis, the Paul G. Allen Foundation identified diagnostic gaps as one of the major deficiencies that had contributed to the outbreak’s spread. “The standard diagnostic tests that exist are very good, but they’re hard to do out in the field in the middle of an outbreak like we saw in West Africa,” said John Connor, a virologist at the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory (NEIDL). Instead, samples need to be sent to a facility capable of running the tests, which means it could be several days between taking a sample and getting a diagnosis. Connor, in collaboration with researchers from Columbia University, the National Institutes of Health Integrated Research Facility, clinical collaborators from Senegal and the Hemorrhagic Fever Lab in Guinea, as well as Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), came together and proposed an idea for a new kind of diagnostic that would bridge critical gaps in the field. “We set out to create a rapid, point-of-care diagnostic that could look for malaria, Ebola and other pathogens that are often found in these regions,” said Connor, who is also an associate professor of microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine. The Allen Foundation, based in Seattle, WA, agreed to fund the project. While there are myriad ways to design rapid, portable diagnostics, the sol...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: IVD Source Type: news