26
June 2008
US Funding Development
of New Diagnostic Tests for Influenza A H5N1 Virus in Humans with Results
within 3 Hours
The
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conjunction with the
Office of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) have
funded two US companies to develop “low-cost influenza tests that can
differentiate seasonal human influenza viruses from avian influenza within
three hours”. The press release can be
found on the HHS website at www.hhs.gov
HHS
stated that currently testing for H5N1 infection in humans “can take up to 24
hours”. The proposed new, faster tests (within 3 hours) for H5N1 virus
infection “could be performed in a hospital or a commercial laboratory and
would expedite the diagnosis of large numbers of patients”.
The
two companies receiving the awards are Nanogen, Inc, San Diego, California and
Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC, Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The
availability of such significantly faster diagnostic tests for human H5N1 virus
infection could be of immediate clinical use to nations already experiencing
human infections with H5N1 virus. Hopefully, these new tests would be
sufficiently sensitive to detects the different clades and subclades of H5N1
including clade 2.1 in Indonesia, clade 2.2 in Africa, and clade 2.3 in China
and some other parts of Asia.
Such
faster diagnostic tests could be performed at “points-of-care” where persons
with suspected H5N1 virus infection are seen and clinically evaluated. A
positive test result could significantly improve clinical care and infection
control measures. In addition, if one outcome of such new tests is that an
effective antiviral drug (e.g., oseltamivir (Tamiflu)) is given earlier to
patients who have H5N1 virus infection, then the extremely high case fatality
rate recorded in all nations to date should be decreased.
Daniel
R. Lucey, MD, MPH
EROne
Institutes Department of Emergency
Medicine
Washington
Hospital Center
Adjunct
Professor Microbiology and Immunology
Georgetown
University Medical Center
Washington,
DC
Website
for this posting: www.BePast.org
e-mail:DRL23@Georgetown.edu