Stanford Scientists Develop New Oral HIV Test for Early Detection
by 2Paragraphs in Daily Edition
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| Oraquick, an oral HIV test on the market today (photo by Marcello Casal JR/ABr via Wikimedia Commons) |
Getting blood from a potentially infected person is not as easy as getting saliva. Let’s start there. Many people and cultures resist syringes — and drawing blood, even for those who don’t resist on principle, is a more cumbersome process than collecting spit in a cup. Problem is: it’s a lot easier to detect early stage HIV in blood than in saliva. While the antibodies that develop to fight the virus are hard to miss in a blood sample, in a saliva sample it’s less easy to detect HIV antibodies. (Fewer HIV antibodies are present in saliva, especially near the beginning of the infection.) Enter Stanford University chemists, working with the Alameda County Public Health Laboratory. The chemists, led by Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi, developed a way to get those HIV antibodies in saliva to act in a way that made them detectable.
https://2paragraphs.com/2018/01/stanford-scientists-develop-new-oral-hiv-test-for-early-detection/
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