What do you know about nucleic acid molecular detection testing?

that's an interesting development - thanks for posting

unfortunately the website is pretty light on details - not even explaining what the technology used is - which is a bit odd - for something so new

but overall - portable- reusable point of care testing for many different pathogens with results in minutes - and approx. 99% sensitivity and sensitivity = pretty neat

limit of detection seems to be around 400 copies per ml - which is up there in the range expected if a person had already developed a virus - so it could be used to detect what they have and help guide treatment without waiting days
or [perhaps it could be used to help family members stay away from infectious people etc

i have just come down with another round of COVID - which has knocked me back around 12 months at the moment and i am just waiting to see how fast i can rebound - as i was really moving forward in a good way just before this - which is hugely frustrating

so if there was a way it could be used to help prevent these kind of setbacks it would be great

from what i can gather - it uses some kind of isothermal nucleic acid amplification (that step is a similar process to PCR) - and then attaches some kind of fluorescent marker to the RNA - and then measures the fluorescence of the sample to get a result
bit more info on the method here for https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38129524/

its probably around 100 times less sensitive than straight qPCR ( which can probably do something like 2 copies per ml at the theoretical limit ) - but that's probably an unfair comparison - as this device is not trying to compete with PCR accuracy -
its trying to beat antigen based point of care tests for accuracy - in a re-useable device - mainly for common viruses

with acute respiratory viruses that multiply rapidly in the host and will very quickly surpass the 400 copies per ml limit - it should work well - which is what they have shown

i suspect this one is legit - but the medical device wold has been subject to many fraudulent inventions and dubious claims in recent years - so before i parted with any serious cash i would want to check out how impartial the 3rd party testing was

saraeli said...

What makes you say it's probably 100x less sensitive than PCR?

the website says its limit of detection is around 400 copies of genetic material per millilitre of sample with high confidence

qPCR can theoretically detect a single copy of genetic material in the sample and is generally regarded to reach 95% confidence interval at around 3 copies of genetic material in the sample - which is typically 0.5 to 1ml

so 3/400 = roughly 100 times less sensitive

as i mentioned - its not a technology aimed at v hard to detect low absolute count chronic infections like Lyme, bart etc - or at competing with specialist lab based qPCR - but aimed at detecting common acute viruses and infections that have high absolute counts - and are therefore much easier to detect - at the point of care.
you don't actually need all the sensitivity of qPCR for that - and in fact its extreme sensitivity leaves it open to issues with contamination etc

the differentiator or "unmet need" they seem to be aiming for - is trying to detect these a few days sooner than the currently available point of care tests - like covid antigen based tests - which need the host to be well into the infectious stage and producing lots of antigen to detect it reliably - whereas this test claims to do that 2 days sooner

i assume they are working on the basis that in health care settings at scale - they can reduce morbidity and mortality, on average, if they can detect reliably a couple of days sooner.
maybe they are aiming at personal use cases as well - eg for sexually transmitted disease

hope its of some help

happy to help - posting on here takes my mind off feeling so ropey - so don't feel bad

ref the test - it looks A LOT better than the lateral flow antigen tests