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A USB Stick Can Show HIV Test Results In Under 30 Minutes (qz.com)
Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a USB stick that can measure the presence and amount of HIV in a person's blood in under 30 minutes and with 95% accuracy. The USB stick should help make testing easier in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV is a serious problem and where many people live in rural regions hours or days travel away from hospitals or clinics. Also, traditional HIV testing can take days to show results, whereas the USB stick can show results in minutes. Quartz reports: The new diagnostic tool, co-created by the university and biotech company DNA Electronics, requires simply putting a single drop of blood onto a designated spot on the USB stick. The device contains a mechanism that can detect if there's any HIV genetic material -- RNA -- in the drop of blood, and if so, how much. Then, when the stick is connected to a laptop or handheld device, the data are automatically delivered to an app where the patient can quickly read his or her results. One of the most effective HIV treatments currently, called anti-retroviral treatment, reduces virus levels to near zero. However, in some cases, the virus may develop a resistance to medication or therapy, causing the virus to resurface. To catch such developments early, patients can use the devices for monitoring purposes. "The disposable test could be used by HIV patients to monitor their own treatment and help patients in remote regions of the world, where more standard HIV tests are inaccessible," the authors of the study write. For now, it's still in the proof-of-concept stage, and years away from hitting the market.
If your asshole is tight and is only used for poop, then you don't have HIV.
Under the gop system 30 min to get black listed for life.
i just got an HIV test that they referred to as the "quick HIV test" and required a finger prick. it took 20 minutes...
Please tell me Elizabeth Holmes isn't anywhere near this entity.
It might have a virus.
Ship them to Austin, Texas and the entire state of California.
For edification, DNAe actually has some merit. They're a London based company and developed the technology behind the Ion Torrent DNA sequencer that is sold by Thermo Fisher. The Ion Torrent is a valid machine, although not quite as good as the MiSeq from Illumina. It works by breaking DNA up and the hydrogen ions released create a measurable signal alteration on the silicon FETs; the chemistry invovled is astounding to make it go where you want and sequence stuff.
https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/brands/ion-torrent.html
This appears to be a miniaturization of the technology. Viruses, particularly RNA viruses, have a lot fewer genes to work with; HIV only has 9 genes as compared to the human genome which has around 25,000. Since you don't need as much processing power it's conceivable you could miniaturize the Ion Torrent technology for a smaller target like HIV viral RNA.
As it should be. Aids is a lifestyle choice, not a disease.
to outlaw this like they have all of the other good HIV tests. The one we have in the US is incredibly unreliable. I was shown positive the first four times I took it. The fifth time it showed I was negative. The healthcare system in the US is not allowed to be accurate.
maybe/maybe not.
prison is a lifestyle choice but DR covers more then the ER does and they don't ask how are you going to pay for this.
Who are you working for? Obviously some type of paid agitator. GTFO.
Not exactly. But I can assure you that I make far more money than you do.
Doctor : You have AIDS.
Queer : What do I do ?
Doctor : You have to eat a big bowl of hot chili peppers.
Queer : Will that cure my AIDS ?
Doctor : No, but now you'll know what your ass is for.
It has "a mechanism" to detect RNA...but only one specific kind of RNA? They didn't come up with a broader approach to detect, say, many kinds of viruses? And it's so commoditizable that it's a USB stick?
*cough*Theranos*cough*
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
95% accurate with the other 5% in favour of false positive (falsely showing you have HIV) would probably be a lot better than mistakenly telling you that you don't have HIV.
If somebody uses the stick and gets the HIV+ reading, then hopefully he/she will go in for a more accurate test. Getting the all-clear for somebody actually is infected could result in some pretty bad outcomes though.
I like the idea of a USB stick that can reveal my HIV status. However, I have two questions about how this works:
Inquiring minds want to know.
Practically every comment on this story is mocking or otherwise tearing strips off degenerate faggot filth. I approve.
Captcha: 'wetness'. Even the captcha system is in on it. Bravo, Slashdot. Bravo.
Good up until "disposable test".
That's not so good.
We don't need more disposable junk.
We don't need the high cost either.
It should be rinsed and reusable.
Shame on them.
need to know both false positive and false negative surely?
If most people don't have HIV and people without HIV are correctly told that 95% of the time, that means there are shit loads of people being incorrectly told they have HIV
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Then why should the results be read through an app? Once results are found maybe it should produce some commonly readable files as the USB stick is mounted as a drive, allowing you to view say a PDF, TXT, HTML, and PNG of the results, allowing it to be read on any device in whatever format is most convenient. Why tie this to an app that may or may not be updated or even currently supported on the given OS?
Twinstiq, game news
does it come with a needle, some disinfectant and where can i get one ? i need to get laid STAT
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
And as we all know, only gay people get aids..... /s
Got a date? Give the test before you get busy ! Make the device cheap and available everywhere. And we can have easy testing in public schools and in many other places and situations as well. Jails and prisons could use this to be certain that cell mates do not contaminate each other.
First this device is ONLY effective for cases of "high viral load" which means "full-blown, endemic, untreated HIV infections", rather than "I fucked the wrong person last night, did I get HIV?" situations. The difference is that testing for something at such a high concentration is radically easier than a "detecting trace amounts" which are common to the latter situation OR cases of a person already being treated for HIV.
Second is the stated accuracy rate is 95% for in vivo (in a lab test tube version of the same test) but the unit itself isn't that accurate - it's only 88.8% accurate. Both of these don't mean that you have 95% certainty of yea or nay only when you have a 100% certain positive or negative - e.g. you get these numbers when you know for certain the person does or does not have HIV. This is not how clinical testing works - instead you don't know if the individuals tested have HIV - that's a different test and test result! So say the actual population rate 0.6% (e.g the USA). Then the actual clinical accuracy is far lower because the false positives and false negatives confound you. Use in the USA, the expected single test diagnostic accuracy would less than 1%. Used in Africa such as Zimbabwe, the single-test accuracy would be 15% and only because of the low cost, could be used again to retest to increase that accuracy.
To get "reasonable" accuracies, you need the accuracy rate to be "many 9's" such as 99.9% to avoid Bayesian effects. It's this Bayesian effect that causes both mammograms and PSA tests to be marginal to dubious in actual effectiveness. Same goes for this: the utility literally depends on having endemic HIV!