THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
April 16, 2021 at 08:00 JST
Kazuhito Tomizawa, left, a professor at Kumamoto University’s graduate school, and Yu Nagayoshi, a graduate student at the school, attend a news conference in Kumamoto’s Chuo Ward on March 23. (Rieko Oki)
KUMAMOTO--The old saying about safety in numbers couldn't be more true when it comes to ensuring that testing for the novel coronavirus is done in a manner that does not expose medical professionals to the risk of infection.
Researchers here say they have developed a safer and quicker way to show if a patient tests positive for the virus.
A research team headed by Kazuhito Tomizawa, a professor of molecular physiology at Kumamoto University’s Faculty of Life Sciences, said it had completed a test method that relied on blood and urine samples rather than nasal swipes.
As infectious strains of the virus are absent from blood and urine, the test is expected to lower the risk of health care providers becoming infected compared with traditional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) solutions.
The testing developed by Tomizawa and his colleagues takes advantage of a substance known as modified nucleoside in blood and urinary samples to detect the virus.
The team analyzed blood and urine specimens collected from COVID-19 patients in Kumamoto Prefecture. From among 100 or so kinds of modified nucleoside, it identified two that show marked increases following infection regardless of whether patients show any symptoms.
The method boasts almost the same level of accuracy as the PCR technique. Making a diagnosis under this method takes no more than 40 or 50 minutes.
Testing technicians also do not have to don protective gear or work in a biosafety environment to prevent the spread of the virus, team members said.
When the indicators record high figures in the testing procedure, patients are more prone to see their condition deteriorate suddenly, the researchers said.
The gravity of symptoms and the degree of recovery also turned out to be reflected in the barometers.
For this reason, the researchers anticipate that their testing procedure can be used when deciding which facility to accommodate certain patients and tracing their health condition during treatment.
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