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| via zbrushcentral.com |
Source: Stanford University
"A common theme in medicine is that detecting a disease early on can lead to more effective treatments. The idea relies partly on luck that the patient gets screened at the right time, but more important is that the testing techniques are sensitive enough to register minuscule hints that diseases leave in the blood stream.
A new technique shows promise to be thousands of times more sensitive than current techniques in lab experiments, and it is now being put to test in real-world clinical trials.
When a disease—whether it’s a cancer or a virus like HIV—begins growing in the body, the immune system responds by producing antibodies. Fishing these antibodies or related biomarkers out of the blood is one way that scientists infer the presence of a disease.
The process involves designing a molecule that the biomarker will bind to, and which is adorned with an identifying “flag.” Through a series of specialized chemical reactions, known as an immunoassay, researchers can isolate that flag, and the biomarker bound to it, to provide a proxy measurement of the disease..."
Read more here:
http://www.futurity.org/sensitive-diagnostic-test-1118972-2/
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