14 DAY TRIAL // Wash your hands all you want and let your fruit or raw veggies soak in the sink for hours if you think that will make you feel more comfortable about eating them, but make no mistake, odds are you'll still be colonized by a few unwanted guests while going about your daily business.
Even spookier, scientists say that sometimes you won't even be aware of it. Your immune system will kick into gear, fight off the invaders and restore order. You, however, will go from one day to the other thinking that everything is A-OK.
The thing is that, although you might not care, medical experts like to know such details about your life as what viruses your body has fought and triumphed over.
Presently, the standard method to solve this puzzle is to carry out individual tests identifying the viruses a patient's immune system has had to duel one at a time. Thanks to a team of researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, however, things are about to change.
New blood test scans for a cohort of viruses at once
To fight different infections, the body's immune system produces specific antibodies designed to tackle one invader or another. Even after the infections are dealt with, these antibodies remain on standby in the organism.
To find whether a patient has been infected by a particular virus at some point in their life, specialists expose antibodies in their blood to molecules carrying the signature of that virus. If certain antibodies respond promptly, this means that they are familiar with it.
As mentioned, current protocol means testing for just one past or current infections at a time. To save time and make the procedure more effective, Howard Hughes Medical Institute specialists have devised a method to scan for traces of multiple infections at once.
Their method, which the scientists called VirScan, means being able to determine all the infections a patient has ever been faced with by looking at the profile of just a drop of their blood.
“With VirScan, scientists can run a single test to determine which viruses have infected an individual, rather than limiting their analysis to particular viruses,” the researchers write in a statement.
“That unbiased approach could uncover unexpected factors affecting individual patients' health, and also expands opportunities to analyze and compare viral infections in large populations,” they add.
The VirScan method is reliable, also cost-effective
In a study published earlier this week in the journal Science, the specialists explain that this simple blood test that they developed can be performed at a cost of just $25 (about €22).
Further, the scientists say that, in a series of experiments carried out with the help of volunteers, they found it to be quite effective at pinning down antibody reactions.
Having analyzed blood samples from 600 individuals in the US, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute team found that this group of volunteers had on average fought about 10 infections by the time they were tested. A few volunteers, however, tested positive for as many as 84 viruses.
Given its accuracy and the fact that it comes at a perfectly reasonable cost, the researchers argue that their VirScan method to zoom in on past and present infections is preferable to the procedures now used by medical experts.