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Researchers Develop Compact Breathalyzer That Detects the Flu (digitaltrends.com)
Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have created a prototype breathalyzer-style device capable of detecting the influenza virus in its early stages -- before you start to show symptoms. "What I have created -- together with my research team and research collaborators working on this project -- is a single exhale, portable, handheld, potentially wireless, battery-operated, inexpensive, breathalyzer that relies on gas-selective sensing elements, and which detects the presence and monitors the concentration of biomarkers in breath that signal a disease," Perena Gouma, a professor in the university's Materials Science and Engineering Department, told Digital Trends. From the report: The specific biomarkers the breathalyzer looks for include traces of nitric oxide and ammonia, both of which can be measured using smart sensors. "This particular breathalyzer detects flu virus infection," she continued. "This is expected to be a personalized diagnostics tool available over the counter and it will allow the individuals to monitor their health, with the option of sharing the data obtained with their physician in real time." Gouma has previously developed other breathalyzers, for everything from asthma detection and diabetes monitoring to determining an endpoint for hemodialysis, the process of filtering waste products from the blood. The neat thing about breathalyzers, Gouma said, is that the technology involved can be easily modified to detect different diseases simply by changing the sensors. In this example, for instance, it could be upgraded to instead test for Ebola. As for when this technology may be available, Gouma said the team needs to carry out clinical trials, "but we are already exploring our options for commercializing this tool."
Until they have a peer reviewed article, this is just vaporware almost identical to the product claimed by failed Theranos.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
ok. you're infected and quarantined.
Does this mean that employers will be able to breathalyse employees to detect those who say they've had the flu but are chucking a sickie?
Why would I test for flu if I have no symptoms? Does he expect me to just test every morning when I get up from bed? Seems a waste, since I haven't had flu for around 40 years.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Make a version of this sensor that can tell when one of your coworkers arrives at the office contagious so that they can be sent home before infecting everyone around them. People who ignore their symptoms and come to work anyway are a huge drain on productivity, IMHO.
From the report "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are now reporting that, in the United States, a more immediate health crisis than the Ebola epidemic in Africa is emerging with the reappearance of the H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus, a recurring strain that has apparently undergone genetic drift in 2014, such that vaccines may offer only limited protection" This does not pass the smell test. You do not start with a fright, how about telling me how this device works?
Using gas from exhaled breath to detect disease is a whole medical field that the people running this study are evidently unaware of (none of them have a medical background). If diagnosing influenza was as easy as detecting nitric oxide and ammonia in breath, we would already have this. The problem is that almost anything wrong with you causes you to exhale nitric oxide and ammonia. The real state of the art in this field looks at dozens of markers simultaneously to correct for common background effects (i.e. air pollution, your metabolism, what you had for lunch...). Handheld detectors for this stuff are all over the place.
There's a wikipedia article for "Exhaled Nitric Oxide" that goes over some of these things. This study was funded by NSF? Why? If you can Google your research question and find the answer dozens of times over, you don't need to waste some poor grad student's time for 2-3 years to get the answer yet again.
I know when I'm about to come down with the flu, I can feel it in my joints usually about 12 hours before other symptoms appear. I don't know why, but so far it's been 100% accurate, 100% of the time.
If this works as advertised, even with a confidence of 90%, I can see it quickly becoming a mandatory test before boarding an airplane worldwide, which is how the flu spreads around the world every year. Sure it might inconvenience a few people who are just carriers without much in the way of symptoms, but the flu kills around 500,000 annually. If we could use this tool to keep it from hopping continents as rapidly, we would likely see flu vaccines become much more effective, as they would have more time to prepare and the disease mutation rate would be reduced.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
We've known what causes people to get sick (germs)
(...which is a gross over simplification. disease are caused by entirely different types of bugd: viruses, bacteria, funghi, protozoa, microscopic animals like worms, etc.)
for over a hundred years now. But it's amazing how many people still put their faith in things like health food diets.
Well, eating properly cooked food and drinking clean water can be proven to reduce some diseases
With proper detection and quarantine the flu could be eliminated from the human population almost entirely.
fat chance.
some diseases which are 100% human-targeting have indeed been eliminated (and you need to add vaccine on the list of things used against them).
but influenza affects tons of other animals (e.g: pigs) of which some are wild (e.g.: birds). And its going to be nearly impossible to control the spread of viral infections among (wild) migrating birds.
you can give specific anti virals to cases of Influenza detected early enough, you can quarantine to diminish transmission when sick (i.e. staying at home when sick.) but you can still have transmitted before starting to feel the symptoms), you can vaccinate to slow down its spread (hoping that the correct sub-type was predicted).
but you can't easily prevent animals carrying the influenza to pass it to human.
(well, in practice it's a tiny bit more complicated than just "passing". the different strains need to hybridize. but you got the general idea).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Does he expect me to just test every morning when I get up from bed?
not every morning, and not everyone.
but if the technology can become cheap enough, some at risk situations could be monitored (non vaccined people, who are in contact with lots of others, when there's an active outbreak around).
and there's an immense benefits in detecting early:
- have the currently not yet symptomatic sick stay at home to avoid spreading it further (with most viruses, including influenza, you could be transmitting before you start feeling symptoms).
- treat it with specific anti-virals (for influenza: the sooner you start, the better the chances of it being effective. starting more than 48h after the onset of symptoms won't make much a difference - you'll still be dick. being able to begin therapy before even the symptoms starts will surely reduce the impact of the flu)
thus, if such a tchnology works, you could replace "laying in bed for 1 week" by "working from home for a couple of days" (a lot better quality of time)
and from an employer's perspective, it means that 1 sick guy wont contaminate your whole company (a lot less lost days)
(of course, for that you need a technology that is precise enough. i somewhat feel that if the analysis is limited to few gazes mentioned, it might tire of too many false alerts).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
But where I live, I just go into a pharmacy, buy a flu shot for 12 bucks and ram it myself into my gluteus maximus.
(I don't like to wait for half an hour at a doctor's.)
It's much cheaper than such a device, which just tells you that you have the flu, a viral disease that cannot be cured, only immunization helps.
I don't think I've ever had the flu. I've been told that if you are unsure if you've ever had it, you probably haven't.
If it was cheap and it wasn't illegal I'd consider requiring employees to use it before entering the office. Otherwise they come in and give everyone else the flu which gives lots of people pain, misery, and possibly even death. Just in the USA 36000 people die a year and 200k people get hospitalized because of flu.
I can see restaurants and supermarkets (food handlers) being required to do the same.
I have one of these. It's called my nose. I can smell when people (including myself) have the flu, often before other symptoms appear. It's a distinct smell that I've only encountered when people have the flu.
I bet you could train dogs to tell you when people have the flu for about 1/10th the cost and 10x the reliability of this device.
thus, if such a tchnology works, you could replace "laying in bed for 1 week" by "working from home for a couple of days" (a lot better quality of time)
Some companies can allow that. Many more cannot. Good luck assembling products or working in a restaurant while "working" at home. Hard for a nurse to take care of patients or for a construction worker to build a road from home. For many people (esp hourly people) missing work is not really a viable option even when sick.
Few employers provide enough paid sick leave to mitigate this problem. At my place of work people have to be considering a hospital visit before they will stay away. Why? Because they can't afford to lose the pay and the company can't afford to pay them to not work. Happens at my company all the time. We have a lot of unskilled assembly workers and the wages they get are low, commensurate with their ability level. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck so unpaid time off hurts them badly.
Don't forget that there are lots of malingerers out there too. I have one employee who calls in sick with considerable regularity but curiously it is almost always on a Friday or a Monday. Genuinely sick? Yeah, not so much. There are lots of people who will use any excuse they can find to not work.
So I can tell a few days earlier that I've caught the flu. How does that knowledge benefit me in any way?
Some companies can allow that. Many more cannot. Good luck assembling products or working in a restaurant while "working" at home. Hard for a nurse to take care of patients or for a construction worker to build a road from home.
Well, when I was speaking about work from home, i was more thinking about the typical /. crowd, working IT jobs or science jobs.
Of course for other people, that might instead be staying at home on a sick leave.
For many people (esp hourly people) missing work is not really a viable option even when sick.
Few employers provide enough paid sick leave to mitigate this problem. At my place of work people have to be considering a hospital visit before they will stay away.
Two very important things:
1- There are countries where sick leave days are the norm.
It is mandatory for both employee and companies to be covered by health insurance that will pay for sick days.
usually up to 2 days are "no question asked", beyond that a visit at the doctor is mandatory.
But yeah, I now : that is for us "evil communist european countries". Not for your land of the free, make america great again.
2- now, from a purely business logic: which situation does make more sense economically :
A. company doesn't pay any sick days. it's employee try to stay working no matter what. so in case of Influenza virus outbreak they stay at work. they don't treat their sickness, so eventually they are completely useless for a whole week (thanks to flu symptoms), but you dtill have to pay them, just because theu showed up. and by being at work while sick, they contaminate the rest of your workforce l. so everybody ends up being un productive for at least 1 week (except for the few people that could afford to get vaccinated againdt influenza A virus) (and that's hoping that this years strain was correctly predicted).
That is going to cost a lot of productivity to the company.
B. company ponies up and is able to pay at least a pay a few sick day leaves. A sick employee can afford to stay at home. They'll still be away for one week, but at least they won't transmit the disease much and there are only a few employee being absent.
Overall, it costs a bit to the company, but productivity doesn't dip that much down during each year's influenza outbreak.
C. health insurrance mandatory for every one. It costs a bit to the employer and employee to have a health plan.
But at least the health plan can cover sick days. And drugs expenses and medical visit.
In case of influenza, no only can the employee afford to stay home (and thus avoid to contaminate everyone else), but they can even afford to go to the doctor early enough (not only waiting until it has to be hospital) and thus get proper anti-viral therapy. Meaning that the employee is only away for 1 or 2 days while only having a very mild case if flu, instead of being debilitated by the symptoms and having to stay a whole week in the bed.
So it costs a bit to the componay and the employee, but productivity has barely any noticeable dip, even during outbreaks.
Also, lots of health plan also reimburse preventive medecine, and thus much more employee can afford to get vaccinated. Therefor even less employee are actually concerned by the seasonnal flu outbreak.
Overall, this is also the best scenario for the quality of life of the employee, as they get less sick and are in general better health (also meaning that they don't die too early, and that you don't risk losing trained workforce)
Ultra liberal USA went for A, because "it's not my fault if you're irresponsible and can't afford your health !" type liberals.
The rest of the developped world went for C - but we know, we are freedom-hating socialist scum.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]