4 ms·
From a public health perspective, recommendations and guidelines like this drive insurance company policies and government funding priorities. Or in other words
by ethbro 7y ago
From a public health perspective, recommendations and guidelines like this drive insurance company policies and government funding priorities. Or in other words, the things that actually move the needle when you're trying to get something done for an appreciable percentage of citizens.
There's no ability and need to test everyone today, but this is a sign that we should move to more regular screening of higher percentages of the population.
Honestly, I'm kind of curious from those involved in the field: What's the blocker to rolling out extremely broad, minimal-cost testing? Manual processes? Too few companies in the testing market? Requires expensive prep / reagents?
- hep_c_throwaway 7y ago>There's no ability and need to test everyone today, but this is a sign that we should move to more regular screening of higher percentages of the population. Signs of Hepatitis C, along with most liver diseases, can be caught with the standard liver enzyme tests that's available in pretty much every lab in the developed world. To be specific, if you see your doctor and it's been more than 6 month since your last visit, then it's standard procedure to take a blood test. Your doctor will take out a pre-printed form that's commonly called "laboratory requisition form" or "assay requisition form", fill out the patient information and tick a few boxes. If they ticked the "ALT" box, then they have ordered the necessary liver enzyme tests. Quoting Wikipedia: "Significantly elevated levels of ALT (SGPT) often suggest the existence of other medical problems such as viral hepatitis, diabetes, congestive heart failure, liver damage, bile duct problems, infectious mononucleosis, or myopathy, so ALT is commonly used as a way of screening for liver problems."[1] Here's a Kaiser Permanente laboratory requisition form[2] with the ALT checkbox. Here's a Quebec health provider that include ALT in their general profile test #1 through #4 [3]. Testing for Hepatitis C directly is also widely available. Since it's a public health hazard, most state and national governments in the developed world has setup free testing programs. For example, I Googled "california hep c testing" and this page[4] is the third result. They offer _free_ Hepatitis C tests with the results available in 20 minutes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanine_transaminase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanine_transaminase [2] http://testinfo.kaiserpermanente.org/info_assets/cpp_ga/pdfs/Laboratory_Req_2016_Front.pdf http://testinfo.kaiserpermanente.org/info_assets/cpp_ga/pdfs... [3] https://www.dynacare.ca/DYN/media/DYN/Pdf/Print%20a%20Form/Generic-Dynacare-EN_V1_28NOV2018.pdf https://www.dynacare.ca/DYN/media/DYN/Pdf/Print%20a%20Form/G... [4] https://www.sfaf.org/services/sexual-health-and-testing/hiv-sti-testing/ https://www.sfaf.org/services/sexual-health-and-testing/hiv-...
- ethbro 7y agoForgive a non-bio major, but these tests can generally be segregated into cultured (pcr) / non-cultured, no? And I'm guessing as an enzyme test, this would fall into the later category?
- gnopgnip 7y agoThe blocker is generally the cost associated with false positives. If you are low risk for hep C and you get a positive test result it is more likely than not a false positive
- jessaustin 7y agoThis associated cost is what, the price of another, perhaps more expensive, test? That doesn't seem like a big deal...