New research finds ways to improve accuracy of Lateral Flow Tests
2021-06-16
(Press-News.org) Research published in the journal ACS Materials and Interfaces has provided new understanding of how false-negative results in Lateral Flow Tests occur and provides opportunity for simple improvements to be made.
Lateral Flow Devices were introduced late in 2020 on a global scale to help detect novel coronavirus infection in individuals, with test results produced rapidly in half an hour or less. However, their potential has been somewhat hindered by inadequate sensitivity, with a high number of false-negative results.
Using X-ray fluorescence imaging from Diamond Light Source, researchers from King's College London set out to identify what could be causing these false-negative results, and what potential modifications could enable increased accuracy.
They identified that the underlying technology of many Lateral Flow Devices is highly accurate and able to theoretically detect trace amounts of the COVID-19 virus, but the limitations fall to the read-out of the device - the technology used to communicate the result of the test.
In the study, they have suggested several potentially simple modifications to the Lateral Flow Devices that could lead to improved performance.
Professor Owen Addison from King's College London said: "Methods to detect infectious individuals who do not show or are yet to show symptoms remain essential for the management of the current pandemic. Lateral Flow Devices are the simplest and most accessible tests available, and our findings show great scope for improving the deficiencies that these tests have been recently criticized for."
The collaboration saw researchers from King's College London, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital Trust work with Diamond Light Source, a national science facility, where they used light in the form of X-rays that can be up to 100 billion times brighter than the sun to image how the virus interacts with the tests. The project was supported by a rapid award of experimental time at the science facility.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-06-16
Researchers from the University of Kent's School of Psychology have found that when people are presented with the idea of a Covid-19 "immunity passport", they show less willingness to follow social distancing and face covering guidelines. However, this willingness seems to return when people read more cautious information about Covid-19 immunity.
PhD students Ricky Green and Mikey Biddlestone and Professor Karen Douglas asked participants from the UK and USA to imagine they had either recovered from Covid-19 or were currently infected. Participants asked to imagine ...
2021-06-16
Several different causes of ageing have been discovered, but the question remains whether there are common underlying mechanisms that determine ageing and lifespan. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Ageing research at the University Cologne have now come across folate metabolism in their search for such basic mechanisms. Its regulation underlies many known ageing signalling pathways and leads to longevity. This may provide a new possibility to broadly improve human health during ageing.
In recent decades, ...
2021-06-16
In an international study published by the journal Environment International, the University of Surrey led an international team of air pollution experts in monitoring pollution hotspots in 10 global cities: Dhaka (Bangladesh); São Paulo (Brazil); Guangzhou (China); Medellín (Colombia); Cairo (Egypt); Addis Ababa (Ethiopia); Chennai (India); Sulaymaniyah (Iraq); Blantyre (Malawi); and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania).
Surrey's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) set out to investigate whether the amount of fine air pollution particles (PM2.5) drivers inhaled is connected to the duration drivers spend in pollution hotspots and socio-economic indicators such ...
2021-06-16
2 June 2021, Singapore - The human fetal immune system begins to develop early during gestation, however, factors responsible for fetal immune-priming remain elusive. Using multiple complementary approaches, Dr Florent Ginhoux from A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), Professor Jerry Chan from KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH), Professor Salvatore Albani from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Translational Immunology Institute, with collaborators from Cambridge University explored potential exposure to microbial agents in-utero. The team identified live microbes across fetal organs that stimulate activation of fetal T-cells during the second trimester of gestation. Study published in scientific journal, Cell, on 24 June 2021.
The team profiled microbes ...
2021-06-16
Do you like the thick brush strokes and soft color palettes of an impressionist painting such as those by Claude Monet? Or do you prefer the bold colors and abstract shapes of a Rothko? Individual art tastes have a certain mystique to them, but now a new Caltech study shows that a simple computer program can accurately predict which paintings a person will like.
The new study, appearing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, utilized Amazon's crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk to enlist more than 1,500 volunteers to rate paintings in the genres of impressionism, cubism, abstract, and color field. The volunteers' answers were fed into a computer program and then, after this training period, the computer ...
2021-06-16
Chatbots hold promise for dementia patient or caregiver support, but are still in their infancy, finds a paper published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. None of the interactive digital apps tested by medical researchers and a computer scientist performed well on all testing criteria, and all the apps contained linguistic biases and usability challenges. The authors conclude that until developers produce evidence-based chatbots that have undergone end user evaluation it will be hard to evaluate their potential to adequately educate and support dementia patients and their caregivers.
"Dementia care is complex and no two cases of dementia are alike. Chatbots have the potential of providing ...
2021-06-16
Ozone is a pollutant at ground level, but very high in the atmosphere's "ozone layer," it absorbs damaging ultraviolet radiation. Past studies have examined ozone levels in the Southern Hemisphere, but little is known about levels of the molecule in Antarctica over long periods. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed more than 25 years of Antarctic data, finding that concentrations near the ground arose from both natural and human-related sources.
Ozone gas has a sharp or acrid scent that sometimes accompanies smog or summer storms. It forms when sunlight ...
2021-06-16
Microplastic pollution of waterways has become a huge concern, with the tiny pieces of plastic entering food webs and potentially having harmful effects on animals and people. In addition, microplastics can act as breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions.
In rivers, major sources of microplastics include textile fibers from laundering, water bottle fragments, and films from bags and wrappers. Also prevalent in ...
2021-06-16
An international team of scientists, led by astrophysicists from the University of Bath in the UK, has measured the magnetic field in a far-off Gamma-Ray Burst, confirming for the first time a decades-long theoretical prediction - that the magnetic field in these blast waves becomes scrambled after the ejected material crashes into, and shocks, the surrounding medium.
Black holes are formed when massive stars (at least 40 times larger than our Sun) die in a catastrophic explosion that powers a blast wave. These extremely energetic events drive out material at velocities ...
2021-06-16
Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest-yet-observed example of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the Universe.
At the center of many large galaxies hides a supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun. Interestingly, the mass of the black hole is roughly proportional to the mass ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] New research finds ways to improve accuracy of Lateral Flow Tests
