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New Test Could Reveal Every Virus That's Ever Infected You

Posted by samzenpus on from the just-a-little-prick dept.

sciencehabit writes: A new blood test can find almost every virus you ever caught—in a single drop of blood. Called VirScan, the test surveys the antibodies present in the bloodstream to reveal a history of the viruses you've been infected with throughout your life. Besides diagnosing current illnesses, the new test could be an important tool in developing vaccines and studying links between viruses and chronic disease.

16 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Great tool for insurance companies, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Insurance companies could use this to determine the pattern of risk in your behavior throughout your life. Someone with antibodies for a bunch of diseases related to risky behavior could be charged a higher premium to represent that tendency for greater risk-taking.

    For example, someone with antibodies for 50 different flu strains is clearly taking more risk than someone who has only, say, 10. Maybe they don't wash their hands well enough, or maybe they expose themselves to sick people more. Either way, they are riskier people and should pay more.

    1. Re:Great tool for insurance companies, too by alzoron · · Score: 2

      The flu isn't really a great example for "risky behavior." I would be surprised if I've been exposed to less than 50 strains of the flu virus and I go 3-5 years between being sick with the flu or similar on average. The flu is mostly just a symptom of a life-style that involves being around other people.

    2. Re:Great tool for insurance companies, too by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The flu isn't really a great example for "risky behavior." I would be surprised if I've been exposed to less than 50 strains of the flu virus and I go 3-5 years between being sick with the flu or similar on average. The flu is mostly just a symptom of a life-style that involves being around other people.

      A mega-flora of flu antibodies might actually be good for an applicant for insurance, as it generally represents greater future immunity to evolving flu strains.

      Positives for hepatitis, HIV, etc. would definitely encourage the insurance company to attempt to opt you out.

      wink wink If your maths are correct, I would be interested in getting your Doc's name and a reference.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    3. Re:Great tool for insurance companies, too by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2

      Nor is being 23 and male.

      Statistically, yes it is. 23 year old males are total idiots when it comes to their safety.

    4. Re:Great tool for insurance companies, too by DarkOx · · Score: 3

      If you show positive for HIV the insurance company already has a problem. I think it would work more like this. You show positive for having once had the clap or have HPV. Now you are marked as someone who has/had risky sex, ie outside a monogmous relationship where your partners health status is known or unprotected sex with anyone else. Your risk of contracting something expensive to treat like herpes or HIV went from very low to reasonably possible. Now the insurance company has a good reason to get you off their books.

      That is probably the most likely example I can think of.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    5. Re:Great tool for insurance companies, too by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Actually being in ones early 20s and male is highly correlated with auto accidents that is why the actuaries tell them to do that. Just like being in ones early 20s and female is highly correlated with requiring more frequent and more expensive medical care for a number of conditions including pregnancy.

      For some reason though charging more for one is a prudent insurance practice and discrimination blocked by the ACA for another.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    6. Re: Great tool for insurance companies, too by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      And... neither of those are viruses... but thanks for playing!

  2. Metadata only? by mschaffer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Next they will be saying that the test only looks at the Virus' metadata. They will only be logging the numbers of those who infected you, but not look at the actual antibodies.

  3. Re:Great application by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

    Antibodies do exist for viruses that the body has had to take down, but what if the body is already resilient against a virus because it lacks the "handle" the virus needs?

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  4. Re:Great application by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure, if you were immune do to mutated cell receptors you'd be unlikely to have gotten enough virus to trigger an antibody response. Likewise this would probably only look back 10 years or so, as last I'd heard that was how long memory B cells are thought to live.

  5. Tainted mission statements. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sad part about reading about yet another mission to capture Big Data is not how it can be used for us, but how it can be used against us.

    I hate having to think that way, and yet I'm forced to now. Every time.

    I also struggle who to blame more. A society that demands everything for free, or the corporations that gladly subsidize those demands by selling your online soul in exchange.

    1. Re:Tainted mission statements. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The sad part about reading about yet another mission to capture Big Data is not how it can be used for us, but how it can be used against us.

      I hate having to think that way, and yet I'm forced to now. Every time.

      You're in good company. Nearly every man who helped frame the US constitution was forced to think that way to prevent future abuses of power.

  6. I would LOVE to see it ran against me! by wwphx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a condition called hypogammaglobulinemia. My body doesn't produce immuneglobin. I do weekly infusions of immuneglobin and have done so for six years now. The med is made from the donations of 10,000 people.

    What virus have I NOT had under this test?

    --
    When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
  7. Please tell me. . . by Idou · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that I can get this test so that next time I get sick they can check the difference and have an explicit idea of what I have. . .

    Now, every time I go to the doctor, they are like "we will put you on these antibiotics and if you don't get better, you have a virus." It feels like the freaking middle ages. . .

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  8. Works only if ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

    Your body is still producing those anti bodies, and they have cataloged that substance in the data base and weeded out anti-bodies produced by auto-immune diseases, to reduce false positives. But still it is a major advancement.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  9. Ah yes, now what viruses are associated with cance by aurizon · · Score: 2

    I know some viruses insert into the genome at random places. Some of the places are close to known oncogenes, and may enhance the risk of expressing those oncogenes.
    A virus known to do this may well be otherwise harmless, but if we can identify it, we may be able to vaccinate children against it, thus reducing the later risk of cancer from that cause. There might be dozens of them and we might be able to reduce cancer over-all this way