OSU scientists working on new COVID-19 blood test
One of the challenges with COVID-19 is finding out if people are infected but are showing little to no symptoms.
Researchers at Ohio State are working on a blood test to help combat this problem.
"This antibody test is like a record in your blood stream of whether you've encountered this virus," explained Dr. Linda Saif, distinguished university professor with the Food Animal Health Research Program OARDC, The Ohio State University. She is also a member of our 21 News Coronavirus team.
Ohio State scientists are developing an antibody blood test that would help give a better picture of how many people have been infected.
"The blood test is to test for antibodies in this serum of people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection. So this is very important because when your body encounters the virus, part of the defense against the virus is to make antibodies that will block the infectivity of the virus and those antibodies can be detected in the blood stream using an antibody, various antibody test."
OSU is testing several commercial tests and also working on a confirmatory test of its own to be sure the antibodies detected can neutralize the virus.
Said said that these are hopefully going to be available within the next few weeks but right now they're aimed at patient samples.
"THE GOAL WITH THE PATIENT SAMPLES IS TO BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY CERTAIN PEOPLE THAT MIGHT HAVE ENOUGH ANTIBODIES TO DONATE THEIR PLASMA FOR THE PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITALS TO HELP THEM HOPEFULLY GET OVER THE INFECTION AND RECOVER."
These researchers have also been working with Ohio State Wexner Medical Center physicians on this treatment for severe cases using the blood plasma of people who have recovered from COVID-19.
It has also been in the news that officials would like to have an antibody test to identify people who are most likely immune so they can go back to work and health care professionals can take care of the sickest patients but Dr. Saif warns the test needs to be very sensitive and specific.
"But what we have to make sure is that these tests that are developed if they're commercially or developed in academic labs or in hospitals are highly specific so they'll only react with the SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19, and not other viruses like the common cold so we don't have what we call false positives and also that we don't miss some individuals who were infected and recovered which would be false negatives. So we want a very sensitive and specific test and that's why we're also besides the commercial tests, looking for tests that we develop to validate the commercial test."
