New York, Aug 5 : Although the quick at-home testing kits were a huge triumph during the pandemic Covid-19 the possibility of a similar test for monkeypox is unlikely, according to media reports. The recent worldwide monkeypox outbreak is a reminder of familiarity with the Covid pandemic, which involved painful swabs, the effort for a test and the long wait for the results.
But the two diseases are distinct according to The Verge reported.
In contrast to Covid the monkeypox virus isn’t a respiratory condition The test for Covid focused on the mouth and nose.
Monkeypox however it manifests as painful blisters that resemble sores and other symptoms such as muscles aches and fever.The disease is currently identified by swabbing sores that form in the course of an infection.
Monkeypox is “a different enough” disease, Ben Pinsky, the medical co-director of points of test at Stanford Health Care in the US was quoted as saying.
There’s still plenty of work to be done to determine if patients are able to successfully wipe their own lesions, which can be painful or even difficult, he added.
Additionally, the dependence on lesions implies that patients will only be examined once the earliest symptoms of the disease show.Patients who aren’t symptomaticin particular with no lesions aren’t able to undergo tests.
People can test positive for Covid-19 however without waiting for particular symptoms to show up.
“I’m an avid advocate of the home-based testing of diseases however, you need to have the right test in the appropriate time and we’re still not there,” Paul Yager, Professor in the department of bioengineering at the University of Washington, was quoted as saying.
However, the possibility of quick test kits for home use cannot be ignored according to the report.
A small study published in the Eurosurveillance journal in June, revealed the DNA of the monkeypox virus in saliva, as well as semen, in 12 patients in Spain.
The company, based in California, Flow Health, has also created saliva-based molecular tests for monkeypox.It requires users to put their saliva in the tube and send the sample to PCR testing.
The test isn’t authorized or approved by the US Food and Drug Administration that requires monkeypox tests to be performed on lesions
The company has shared the results of its saliva tests with the FDA as the agency examines to determine if it needs to change its guidelines, Flow Health CEO Alex Meshkin told The Verge.
There’s much to be done in the quest to determine what and when the virus for monkeypox will show up in different areas of the body during the course of the illness which will affect the effectiveness and accuracy of tests that do not use lesions may be.
If the virus of monkeypox shows up in saliva before lesions begin to develop for instance, then the test using saliva could aid in identifying the disease in its early stages.If it doesn’t then this kind of test may not be as effective according to the report.
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