Quick DNA Tests Crack Medical Mysteries Otherwise Missed__Faten

Summary:

According to the article “Quick DNA Crack Medical Mysteries Otherwise Missed” that had written by RICHARD HARRIS mentioned the researchers found a new technique way to diagnose infectious diseases. Instead of guessing or assumption what patient could have and making different kind of tests by taking a sample of infected person’s blood and search through the DNA in it, by looking for sequences that match with virus, bacterium, a fungue or parasite.

Regarding to the article the first result for this technique which called Next Generation Sequencing is reported by scientists who are from the University of San Francisco. This technique was tested on a patient called Andrea Struve, a 21-year-old who returned from Australia with nasty set symptoms by Dr. Charles Chiu, who is running the study, and his colleagues. They made the experiment by extracting DNA from Struve’s blood and run it through superfast sequencing machine then compared the DNA they found with a huge library of all kind of DNA sequences of infectious agents. They found that she infected with virus related to chicken box-  one that normally causes a roseola rash in young children. When Struve went to the doctor, Her doctor made a bunch of guesses about the infectious cause, but all the tests came back negative.

Moreover, Dr. Chiu study involved a medical mystery about 14 years old boy in Wisconsin with brain inflammation, so Dr. Chiu got the sample in few days and with 48 hours he was able to run the assay and detect the organism which is a bacterium called Leptospira and which is common in the tropics that cause the infection. Dr. Chiu and his colleague think the boy picked the microbe while he taking a swim during a family vacation in Puerto Rico. The boy recovered after intensive Penicillin treatment.

This technique has been tested in more than 30 cases so far by Dr. Chiu. He and his colleague have been able to identify an infectious culprit about 25 percent of the time. Some of the remaining cases turned out not to be infections at all. This technique is still experimental and it is done at university and cost about 1,000$ in labor and material without including the expensive machinery. Dr. Chiu hopes in time it will become the go-to analysis when traditional blood tests don't provide the answer.

Commentary:

In my opinion this new Technology will change the Medicine world and will save people lives by diagnosing their illness before put their lives in risks.