{"id":159165,"date":"2023-02-27T19:25:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T01:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/new-testing-approach-diagnoses-covid-19-with-near-perfect-accuracy"},"modified":"2023-02-27T19:25:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T01:25:57","slug":"new-testing-approach-diagnoses-covid-19-with-near-perfect-accuracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/new-testing-approach-diagnoses-covid-19-with-near-perfect-accuracy","title":{"rendered":"New testing approach diagnoses COVID-19 with near-perfect accuracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-testing-approach-diagnoses-covid-19-with-near-perfect-accuracy2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most existing COVID-19 tests \u201crely on the same principle, which is that you have accumulated a detectable amount of viral material, for example, in your nose,\u201d says study lead author Frank Zhang, who worked on the project as a Flatiron research fellow at the Flatiron Institute\u2019s Center for Computational Biology (CCB) in New York City. \u201cThat poses a challenge when it\u2019s early in the infection time window and you haven\u2019t accumulated a lot of viral material, or you\u2019re asymptomatic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The new technique is instead based on how our bodies mount an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/immune+response\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">immune response<\/a> when invaded by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. When the assault starts, specific genes turn on. Segments of those genes produce mRNA molecules that guide the building of proteins. The particular blend of those mRNA molecules changes the types of proteins produced, including proteins involved in virus-fighting functions. The new method can confidently identify when the body is mounting an immune response to the COVID-19 virus by measuring the relative abundance of the various mRNA molecules. The new study is the first to use such an approach to diagnose an infectious disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most existing COVID-19 tests \u201crely on the same principle, which is that you have accumulated a detectable amount of viral material, for example, in your nose,\u201d says study lead author Frank Zhang, who worked on the project as a Flatiron research fellow at the Flatiron Institute\u2019s Center for Computational Biology (CCB) in New York City. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":630,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/630"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}