Specialists of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor have created a new test system, which, according to the developers, most effectively and quickly detects HIV infection.
Until last year, the “gold standard” for confirmatory control testing (when a person already tested positive for HIV, but it needs to be confirmed or refuted) on the basis of which a diagnosis is made, was an immunoblot method that can determine which specific antigens (viral proteins) ) HIV patient has antibodies. However, in 2021, a new SanPiN came into force, which equated PCR with this method.
As Dmitry Kireev, head of the laboratory for the diagnosis and molecular epidemiology of HIV infection, of the Department of Molecular Diagnostics and Epidemiology of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, Dmitry Kireev, told Izvestia, this is an important change, since immunoblotting is an expensive and complicated method, and it sometimes takes about a week to get results. The new method allows you to get the result in a few days, costs much less and will ultimately increase the throughput of laboratories many times over.
It will also be faster than classical PCR. Often, this process is quite time-consuming, because usually the first half of the analysis – the isolation of the nucleic acids of the virus – takes place manually. The operator must, within several hours, working in a closed box, isolate nucleic acids (biological carriers that play a leading role not only in storage, but also in the transmission of hereditary information) from clinical material.
“With our approach, this is done automatically, with the help of a special robot,” said Dmitry Kireev.
According to the developers, this is the first such PCR test for HIV in Russia. Scientists expect that he will receive a registration certificate from Roszdravnadzor this year.
Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:
Robot Lab: Automatic PCR will detect HIV faster than other tests
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
