One single drop of blood is all it takes for a new blood test designed by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers to identify any virus that’s ever infected you across your whole lifetime. It tests for more than 1,000 different virus strains to see what viruses a person may have had in the past.
The new test is called VirScan and was made by encoding 93,000 pieces of synthetic DNA in which to create proteins produced by various viruses. Those strings of DNA were then inserted into bacteriophages so that each one could produce a different viral protein. Then finally the bacteriophages were left to mix with a blood sample.
Whenever we have a virus it leaves a footprint on the immune system. What this means is that when the antibodies mixed with the bacteriophage that matched the viral protein it fought previously it went to work again, attacking and binding themselves to the bacteriophage. From here all the researchers had to do was collate those antibodies and see what bacteriophages were clinging to which antibodies, and they’d know what viruses the person had suffered with previously.
The results of the study were published in 2015 and showed that on average each person had been exposed to 10 viruses within their lifetime. Some participant’s immune systems responded the same to certain viruses which surprised the researchers. They also found that those with HIV had antibodies against more viruses than those who didn’t have the disease.
Current diagnosis techniques involve simply testing for one virus at a time opposed to considering the patient’s whole immune system. Fie example, if your doctor suspected you to have tuberculosis, you would be tested for that only and nothing else, meaning it could be a long time before a true diagnosis is found. Being able to examine a patient’s full list of viruses within the body could give doctors a better chance at getting a correct diagnosis the first time around.
“Having a simple, reproducible method like VirScan may help us generate new hypotheses and understand the interplay between the virome and the host’s immune system, with implications for a variety of diseases,” stated author Stephen Elledge of Harvard. VirScan is still being researched currently so you won’t be seeing it just yet in the doctor’s, but hopefully one day soon.
Related Links;
- Your Viral Infection History from a Single Drop of Blood / HHMI
- Viral History in a Drop of Blood / HMS
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