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PARC Builds iPod-Sized HIV Detector
MikeChino writes "Right now it's difficult, if not impossible, to quickly detect HIV in patients living in impoverished countries. That may all change soon, though — researchers at a California outfit called the Palo Alto Research Center have built an iPod-sized handheld device that can provide an immune check-up in under 10 minutes — all with a prick of the finger. With millions of people around the world without access to a full-size laboratory, PARC's device could revolutionize the detection and treatment of HIV."
So it counts CD4+ T cells. Doesn't anything else kill them?
And not just for the extremely rural areas. It can be used in a doctors office here in the U.S. And that the device doesn't cost a small fortune means you'll see it in widespread adoption in the first world too.
Will it announce the result by playing a tune ?
iPod-sized? Really? Which one? nano, mini, classic, touch, ...
How about some real measurement, like a pack of cards or fractions of a VW Beetle?
Formerly known as Xerox PARC
There's an app for that?
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
...with the addition of common STD infection detection capability, I can see these being bought by regular people. Can you imagine what this would do for the STD worries of people involved in "One Night Stands"?
Don't want to pick up HIV from the last person that got their finger pricked.
Wait, I did WHAT?
Sorry, I've been waiting something like 10 years for this moment...
... who finds it funny that this portable HIV detection device uses a lance?
"Sir, first the good news: you were not HIV positive. Now, the bad: you are now."
I'm sure the lances would be disposable and all, but still.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Its like streaking in a public event: it draws everyones attention immediately, but most people end up simply disgruntled because of the interruption.
I thought iPods caused HIV.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They're going to end up giving to Apple anyway, so might as well describe it in terms they'll be familiar with. This is THAT Palo Alto Research Center, right?? Er...is it, actually?
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
This is not an HIV detector, it's a CD4 T-cell counter. If the count is below 250, it is assumed there is an immune system problem which in poor countries is likely caused by HIV. There is already a cheap test for HIV, using a mouth swab.
What is the detection rate and false positive rate? I can't think a 10 minute check is that accurate considering how long the current methods take. With a disease that still has such a massive stigma as AIDS there could be serious consequences from someone receiving a false positive reading. In developing countries people just need to be taught to use condoms* and otherwise not swap bodily fluids as a general rule. Trying to get the infected in particular to not engage in infection spreading activities is futile as we can't even prevent that in the West (where most people are educated in germ theory). Oh, and also voiding drug patents on AIDS treatments so those millions of people can afford treatment would be an idea.
* And no it isn't the Catholics who are responsible for people not using condoms. The Catholics also tell people not to engage in extra-marital sex, so if someone violates that rule they don't have much excuse to claim that their religious beliefs prevent them wearing a condom..
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
On a related release...
NIST just released the newest dimensional measurement.... iPod.
As well as data density... the L.O.C/iPod.
I know I know, but I couldn't help think of Apple attempting to sue them
I guess these days they do anything to get an Apple product word in the "news". Why can't it be "Small size"?
I'll be buying one of these for my bedroom :D
Oh wait, this is /. etc, etc.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Perhaps the term iPod sized used to mean something when there was only one size of iPod. Now, there is the old big one, the mini, the nano, the touch, the shuffle and perhaps more that I am missing.
can we get one in this form factor? http://rethinking-earth.org/Caduceus/images/tricorder.jpg
I can see call girls (or whatever u may call them and the like) having this things to test clients beforehand.. The whole thing will turn into a mad finger drilling paranoia!
Or worse... Picture dads testing their daughter's 15 y.o. boyfriend and saying:
"Are you afraid?! Do you have something to hide?!!!"
Not to mention that I miss using libraries of the congress and needles' heads as spatial units.. now.. an iPod?! that's lame!
It should be clarified that what PARC is announcing is a small flow cytometer used to count T-cells that express the CD4 antigen, a particular subset of T-cells that is most affected by HIV. A dropping concentration of these cells in HIV+ patients' blood is a reasonable metric for the progression of AIDS. It should also be noted that the system PARC demonstrated is not a full-fledged CD4+ T-cell counter, because you also need to measure CD3 expression to tell apart CD4+ T-cells and other white cells that express CD4, like monocytes. Traditional flow cytometers do this by using two antibodies (CD3 and CD4) labelled with different colored fluorescent dyes and measuring the intensity of each color channel using a photomultiplier tube or avalanche photodiode (these are very weak signals!). The PARC prototype is a proof-of-concept that only measures CD4 expression so would very often overestimate the true concentration of CD4+ T-cells in blood.
The interesting thing here is that they've apparently been able to do away with PMTs and APDs as detectors using a method called spatially modulated fluorescence emission. Typically a very narrowly focused laser beam (a few microns or thinner) is used to excite the fluorescent label, so you get precious few photons out of it to detect (hence the need for high-gain detectors like PMTs and APDs). The idea here is to stretch out the excitation region and use a slit pattern to help in background subtraction since you can predict the locations (in time) of the fluorescence signal as it passes by the slits allowing for integration of that signal over a longer period of time with lower background than you would otherwise be able to with a standard photodiode. This also lets you mitigate the loss of bandwidth you'd get by stretching out your detection region since you can figure out which tiny spikes in signal from the photodiode go together based on the known pattern of spacings in the slit and the timings of the peaks.
Very clever! Definitely a lot more interesting than all the cytometer-on-chip microfluidics stuff that's been thrown around since the 80's to no notable success.
Portable tests are not necessarily what is necessary to make infectious disease detection accessible to the 3rd-world. The main factor is cost, and that is usually addressed with speed and volume. Ex: A molecular diagnostic device could run a 96-well plate of patient samples in about an hour. That's 96 patients per hour as compared with... 6 patients per hour with this device. Now, depending on what this thing costs it might make-up for it, but I highly doubt it.
*prick* -- good news, no HIV!
*prick* -- good news, no HIV!
*prick* -- sorry, you have HIV.
*prick* -- sorry, now you do too.
The only problem with this is that only after the disease has matured in the host and taken time to have a noticeable detrimental affect on the immune system, it's a little late in the game. The virus itself can spend months or even years without bringing the immune system down that low. The entire time, the infected host would be able to spread the disease, all while assuming they were 'clean' if they are not properly educated about the exact metric this test uses.
Although this test might serve a simple function of finding people who have almost moved into full blow A.I.D.S, it does not do enough to detect the disease early enough and it does not remove the need for better testing. At most, it's just a general catch all for the very obvious cases (obvious by immune system function). If anything, this would give a false sense of security.
A California outfit? Holy understatement! They invented the mouse and the desktop metaphor! They've been inventing ground-breaking stuff since the sixties!
why is there a need to compare this and that to ipod. reading initially the headline, i though it was an ipod with hiv detection capability. everybody seems to be comparing stuff to apple products. ipod this, ipad that, iphone there, etc.
but i will have to bow to the people at apple for their great marketing. they have successfully made their products the de facto standard for everyone to have.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
A dropping concentration of these cells in HIV+ patients' blood is a reasonable metric for the progression of AIDS.
translation: a lot of the time it isn't.
which means this machine will be responsible for more of the current tragedy taking place: healthy people are talked into taking poisonous AIDS drugs, the side effects of which will convince they were right to take the drugs. after years of debilitation finally their livers or hearts will fail, and AIDS hacks will call it "AIDS".
think this is crazy? did you know right now in the USA liver failure is the leading cause of AIDS death?
these are hacks. these mainstream scientists. hacks. people need to wake the fk up
...except for the fanbois and the advertisers who conveniently snuck that $brandName in there.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There are still "Medical Professionals", including doctors, thinking that getting blood in the eyes poses none of little risk for the contraction of HIV; and this aside from the third world. This happens in the high-developed countries.
Ambulanciers and doctors having the wrong thought of its infection vector causing dozens of extra victims with the HIV virus; only because of mis/insufficient information. Maybe aids-prevention should start with getting the right information at the right people whom should care...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The problem of the AIDS epidemic is societal, not medical. AIDS is spread because people cannot think beyond the immediate consequences of their actions, and choose to ignore caution in favor of getting "that feeling". If you can't get society to do something as simple as using a condom, what good is it to tell them they've been infected afterward? Do we really expect them to refrain from sex now, when they couldn't/wouldn't before, even when they knew there was a risk of death, and chose to ignore it?
The people who would likely benefit from knowing a partner's HIV status are the kind of people who do long term thinking - IOW, are thinking of marriage or a long term relationship, and are the least likely to be spreading HIV. While I applaud anything that makes medicine less expensive, this device alone is not going to dent the AIDS epidemic. As Uganda has shown (with a 40% drop in infection rate), changing societal behavior is far more effective at curbing the spread of HIV.
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"...a California outfit called the Palo Alto Research Center..."
Please, give them their due. This is a research lab with a long and venerable history, not some flash-in-the-pan Silicon Valley startup.
here in Brasil[know as a third country] we have in the almost all the cities, even small ones, places where we can do AIDS test for free, It is possible to know the result in about 30 minutes. There is now a project where people can send samples of blood by mail.
I'm quite worried about this device, because - imagine you'd learn you are HIV positive this way... wouldn't you break down and possibly try to commit suicide or so? when doctors tell you that you have a deadly, uncurable disease, they offer psychological help and such.
It's not like someone shows around his new gadget on a party and "WHOA! YOU'RE GONNA DIE SOON!"
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
If this isn't.. i don't know what is..
What happened to the terms 'hand held', or 'pocket sized'.. Or is that so 80's to be 1/2 way descriptive?
---- Booth was a patriot ----