Harvard Medical School researchers and their partners have shown that a new test can accurately diagnose the Ebola virus disease within minutes at the point of care, providing clinicians with first-hand information for treating patients and containing outbreaks. Researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS), Partners In Health, and Boston Children’s Hospital have shown that a new, commercially developed rapid-diagnostic test performed at bedside was as sensitive as the conventional laboratory-based method used for clinical testing during the recent outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Inorder to fight Ebola, the first step is to determine which patients are sick with the disease and which with other illnesses that have similar presentation. To use the currently recommended molecular approach, laboratories must be built and samples of highly infectious blood must be drawn, often with unsafe needles and syringes, and then shipped over potentially great distances at substantial risk to the health care workers involved. Then clinicians and patients must wait for results — sometimes for several days. These obstacles and delays prevent timely diagnosis and treatment, and sometimes result in individuals without Ebola being admitted to holding units where they may become infected with the virus, the researchers said.
The researchers noted that it was essential to study the test in the field to see whether it worked in the challenging conditions clinicians face in rural clinics and in Ebola treatment units in such places as Sierra Leone. For example, wearing the required personal protective equipment can make it difficult to read the test strip, so instead of having one clinician check results, the research team developed a method in which two clinicians checked each test, with a third stepping up in cases where the first two disagreed.
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