China develops low-cost respiratory virus kit
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
A doctor at a Beijing hospital has developed a rapid, simple respiratory virus test. The pocket-sized kit uses monoclonal antibodies to differentiate eight types of influenza, parainfluenza, plasmodial and adenovirus under a standard light microscope after a two-to-three hour incubation on standard slides. The kit costs about 20 times less than a rapid fluorescence kit manufactured in the UK, writes Clinica's Chinese correspondent.