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VirScan reveals your viral infection history in a single drop of blood

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Posted 6/4/2015 11:56 PM (GMT 0)
VirScan reveals your viral infection history in a single drop of blood
medicalxpress.com/news/2015-06-viral-infection-history-blood.html

This might be super interesting to test a whack load of IBD patients versus controls.

Just found it kind of funky in general as well.
Posted 6/5/2015 12:43 AM (GMT 0)
cool
Posted 6/5/2015 1:19 AM (GMT 0)
I found this sentence interesting:

"VirScan works by screening the blood for antibodies against any of the 206 species of viruses known to infect humans."

I had no idea the number of viruses infecting humans was that small.
Posted 6/5/2015 1:25 AM (GMT 0)
Thats all weve learned about, but there are many many more we havent found. That doesnt even take into account the viruses of the gut microbiome which is significantly altered in IBD patients.
Posted 6/5/2015 10:37 AM (GMT 0)
Marauder93,
Not bad as a first step. I am pretty sure it will be developed further.
Posted 6/5/2015 1:15 PM (GMT 0)
This is to coolest upcoming detector I think. I came across if when it came out. Would be interesting to find out what stage they are at with it. In regards to one day testing a whack load of IBD patients compared to controls - I think the results might be pretty surprising as it will do virus, bacteria, fungi and protozoa.

Maybe when we flare at times there is really other things causing issues...

www.labome.com/method/New-Technology-for-Bacterial-and-Viral-Detection.html

"Future versions (version 3) of the array will include all available sequence data, including partial sequences and gene fragments, for species lacking complete genomes. The version 3 of LLMDA will expand; it will consist of 2.1 million probes that capability to detect nearly 6,000 viruses and 15,000 bacteria as well as 1000 fungi and 75 protozoa organisms"

It's amazing to think that one day soon we'll go to the doc's, take a prick of blood, spit in a dish or cough up some mucus and a few minutes later they'll say here... this is your exact problem. Take this and get on with life!

Almost Star Trek like in a way.
Posted 6/5/2015 1:29 PM (GMT 0)
I heard this this morning as well. very interesting rapid testing advance. the technology to do this type of genetic marker test for individual viruses has been here for a while, but the broader scan in a single test is the innovation.

I think 206 species should have been 206 families - for instance they are counting rhinovirus as 1 family, but there are 40+ known types of rhinovirus.

Of course there will always be issues of causation. you don't really want to design the study to test IBD patients - it will not tell you if the virus has a likely causative role. COnsider MAP some say you get infected after you get IBD, some think you get MAP and it gives you IBD.

The better study design would be to have gen pop controls, at-risk controls (family member with IBD, or genetic test with several markers associated with IBD), newly dignosed IBD, longer term IBD but in remission, ad then IND recalcitrant to treatment. IF these groups were recruited and then followed ever year or so, while many converted to another group, THEN we could learn a lot as well as have a basis for sorting out causality issues.

But, that would be an expensive and complicated study. Hopefully some pieces of it get going and the design is improved over successive studies.
Posted 6/5/2015 1:37 PM (GMT 0)
It would be great to have doctors actually try to figure out what the problem actually is instead of trying to put a bandaid on it and when that bandaid doesn't work just put a different bandaid on. My UC got much better when I paid for my own stool test, found out what was wrong, and started treating it myself. Right now the docors don't even try anything past a test for C-Diff.
Posted 6/5/2015 3:13 PM (GMT 0)
I just saw something on the news about this and they specifically mentioned it being useful in IBD patients.
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