New Viral Blood Test Can Reveal Infection History For $25

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A recently developed blood test that uses only a minute amount of blood can reveal a person's entire viral infection history.

VirScan, the name of the testing tool developed by scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital, can reveal the viral history of patients. This includes any infections that have not shown any symptoms. It currently costs about $25 per blood sample.

"VirScan provides a powerful and inexpensive tool for studying interactions between the human virome -- the collection of viruses known to infect humans, some of which don't cause symptoms -- and the immune system, which can be altered permanently by viral exposure," the researchers said in a press release.

The test was designed to look for antibodies that are produced by the immune system. Even if one has recovered, majority of the antibodies still remain in the blood.

"Normally, when a doctor wants to know if someone's been infected with a virus, they have to guess what the virus is, and then look specifically for that virus," said Stephen Elledge, co-author of the study published in Science, according to The Guardian.

"This could lead to a diagnostic where people go annually to their doctor and get their viral history recorded. It could certainly discover viral infections that are serious and that a patient didn't know they had," Elledge added.

To develop the test, scientists imbibed harmless viruses with bits of proteins from human viruses so that antibodies can recognize the virus that caused an infection in the body.  Overall, it can analyze more than 1,000 strains of 206 common kinds of viruses, Live Science has learned.

In the demonstration, scientists tested more than 500 people from the United States, South Africa, Peru and Thailand. They found that VirScan was able to detect in the participants an average of 10 different but common species of viruses causing flu, common cold and gastrointestinal illnesses to name a few.

Scientists also ran the blood test on people infected with Hepatitis C and HIV and found the test had 95 percent accuracy.

The current prototype of the test may be limited since it cannot detect past infections brought by certain small viruses or any other virus they have not yet sequenced. But Elledge assured that the newer tests will be made more sensitive.

"While not perfect, we think this method represents a very large step forward toward the goal of comprehensive analysis of viral infections," he said, according to the New York Times.

A scientist who was not involved in the study praised the new invention for its future prospects.

"This will be a treasure trove for communicable disease epidemiology," said Dr. William Schaffner, from Vanderbilt University.  "It will be like the introduction of the electron microscope. It will allow us to have more resolution at a micro level."