http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010830/hl/crystals_1.html
Sources: Reuters |
AP | ABCNEWS.com | HealthSCOUT
Thursday
August 30 6:32 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For years doctors have used
stethoscopes to hear the heart beating, but one day they may be able to listen
for sounds of viral infections, according to a report from the UK.
The listening technology is rapid and accurate and should be relatively
cheap to develop, the study's authors explain.
Dr. Matthew A. Cooper and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, based
their detection method on quartz crystals. These crystals vibrate when exposed
to an electric field. As the electric field strengthens, the vibrations
increase. The vibrations grow even stronger when an additional mass is attached
to the crystals.
Cooper's team coated quartz crystals with an antibody that attracts a type
of herpes virus. Once viruses attached to the quartz, the researchers increased
the intensity of the electric field. The goal of the intensification was to
trigger the virus to break free from the quartz.
Using the quartz as a miniature microphone, the researchers were able to
hear the sounds produced as viruses broke away from the quartz. In fact, they
were able to tell from the sound how many viruses were present. The technique,
known as rupture event scanning, was so sensitive that it could tell whether
only a single virus was present.
``We present data that show it is possible to directly, sensitively and
quantitatively detect a human virus, herpes simplex virus, using rupture event
scanning,'' Cooper and his colleagues write in the September issue of the
journal Nature Biotechnology.
Cooper's team is in the process of simplifying their virus detector to make
it a portable technology. The researchers predict that the listening technique
eventually may be used to provide instant diagnosis in the clinic.
Quartz-based listening technology seems to be ``a useful addition'' to
existing detection techniques, since it appears to be both accurate and fast,
according to Erica Ollmann Saphire and Paul W.H.I. Parren, of The Scripps
Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
In an accompanying editorial, they point out that quartz technology has been
mass-produced cheaply for years, so developing the listening technology should
be feasible.
``Such a development,'' they conclude, ``could be of great benefit to areas
where sensitive techniques to diagnose viral infections are currently
unavailable.''
SOURCE: Nature Biotechnology 2001;19:823-824, 833-837.
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