NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A multinational team ofresearchers has developed a system that can detect the bird fluvirus on a throat swab specimen in less than 30 minutes.

The ability to combat an epidemic of H5N1 bird flu on aglobal scale would depend on having a low-cost, easy-to-usetest that could quickly identify the earliest cases, note Dr.Juergen Pipper, from the Institute of Bioengineering andNanotechnology in Singapore, and colleagues in the researchjournal Nature Medicine.

In their report, the researchers describe the developmentof a handheld system that uses magnetic particles and permanentmagnets to isolate, purify, and concentrate viruses containedin small droplets. The sample then undergoes testing by PCR, orpolymerase chain reaction, to identify the viral RNA.

Compared with current tests, the new system was four timesfaster in detecting H5N1 and up to 50 times cheaper to perform.

Dr. Pipper told Reuters Health that a goal in futurestudies will be to expand the testing capabilities of thesystem, so that it more accurately identifies H5N1. By testingmore RNA sequences in a specimen, "it would be possible todistinguish a rather harmless 'seasonal' influenza from avianinfluenza."

The researchers also point out that the system could beeasily adapted to test for other disease-causing viruses suchas HIV, SARS or hepatitis B virus.

SOURCE: Nature Medicine, online September 23, 2007.