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posted by on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the pee-on-this-stick dept.

There is no vaccine. No medication. And, no quick, reliable test for Zika virus ... until now. Babies born with the virus often have lifelong, devastating birth defects. Testing for the virus currently involves trained medical staff drawing and mailing blood samples to a lab, a process that can take up to four weeks.

"Most adults with Zika have mild flu-like symptoms or no symptoms at all. Couples trying to conceive might not even know if they are infected and at risk," Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak urology scientist Laura Lamb, Ph.D., said.

Dr. Lamb and her Beaumont colleagues developed a quick, simple test for Zika virus so easy to administer, you don't even need a doctor. It's a urine test that produces results in under 30 minutes.

"When we discovered we could reliably detect Zika virus in urine, we knew we had the potential to change lives all over the world," Dr. Lamb said.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:39PM (#510696)

    let someone who's infected know to avoid pregnancy

    Exactly right.

    The test would help inform people when they should plan on having a child - either when both parents are uninfected or when the infection has cleared. Zika virus genomic RNA can persist in sperm for quite a long time after the initial symptomes.