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Blood
Tests Have
Changed
Over the
Years
New alternative
addresses fear
of needles
By Angela S. Hoover,
Staff Writer
Big changes and new discoveries
concerning blood tests have been
made within the past year.
A major change came at the end of
2014 when college dropout Elizabeth
Holmes offered an alternative to being
stuck with a needle for blood tests.
Afraid of needles herself, Holmes
counts it among the top fears – including spiders and snakes – of many
individuals. This phobia means some
people do not get preventative testing. Holmes’ company, Theranos,
developed a blood-testing system
that requires only a single finger prick
instead of the collection of multiple
vials of blood. Relatively painless, it
is also cheaper than the typical blood
test at $30. One drop of blood is all
that is needed for 30 different tests.
Additionally, the test can be done at a
pharmacy with results received within
four hours. Theranos is partnering
with Walgreens; Holmes hopes to have
the new blood tests available at all
8,200 Walgreens in the United States.
Also in the last quarter of 2014,
scientists discovered a way of determining suicide risk, based on genetics, from a blood test. Postmortem
genome scans of brain samples
found that the brains of those who
committed suicide had less of a gene
called SKA2 and higher levels of the
chemical methylation that affects
SKA2’s function. It is believed the
SKA2 gene plays a key role in our
response to stress. Working with
325 living participants, the researchers sought to predict whether participants had experienced suicidal
thoughts via the blood test. Their
results were 80 percent to 90 percent
accurate. Researchers plan to use the
blood test to combat military suicide,
which has a rate 50 percent higher
than that of the general population.
In the beginning of this year,
researchers discovered a blood test
that can differentiate between a
viral and bacterial infection, thus
determining whether antibiotics are
needed or not. MeMed’s Immuno
Xpert test can eliminate overprescription of unneeded antibiotics
for viral infections while also getting
needed antibiotics to patients with
bacterial infections. The Israeli study
examined 1,000 patients’ immune
response to their sickness, looking
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particularly at protein trails that were
activated depending upon whether
their infection was viral or bacterial.
Levels of a protein called TRAIL
shoot up significantly in the blood of
patients with a virus, but they drop
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in the blood of patients with a bacterial infection. MeMed CEO says the
results are “highly accurate, with sensitivity and specificity greater than 90
percent.” The tests results are available
within two hours for most patients.
Lastly, this summer, Howard
Hughes Medical Institute researchers
said a simple blood test can identify
every virus a person has ever had. With
a single d ɽ