has been validated and is now in use in some high-risk settings in Denmark, according to research presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.
He highlighted the utility of the new test in more challenging settings."This method is particularly useful in high-risk settings such as homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, and prisons, where needles might be misused, and it can be difficult to convince people to have the more invasive test."
"If it detects low amounts of virus, it will create many copies very quickly, creating a signal that tells us that the sample is positive," he explained.from a finger prick, dried it out on a protein saver card , and cut out a 1.2 cm diameter dry blood spot which was then prepared for analysis. "Untreated patients typically have above 1 million IU/mL of viral loads in their plasma, and we found that we can detect much lower levels,” said Nilsson-Møller. “Ideally, 40 μL of blood is good, but less should be sufficient if the test is on untreated patients."Elimination of HBV, HCV, and HIV by 2030 is a global health strategy set by the World Health Organization, but to meet this goal, new approaches for diagnostic testing are required.
Pharris also highlighted that while HIV, and often HBV infection, require lifelong treatment, HCV infection is now curable within a few weeks."To maximize the benefits of individual treatment for all three infections, it is critical to test and diagnose people as soon as possible — in itself a challenge given that these infections can typically be asymptomatic for years."