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$1 chip tests for HIV in 15 minutes, fits in your wallet
- gapanalysis 15y agoI wonder how this will come to market and how privacy will be protected. I know purchasing a test chip is not the same as confirming HIV positive but it is a data point, just as pregnancy tests are. If it's OTC do you have to consider how easy it is to track?
- d0ne 15y agoI could foresee these items being purchased in bulk by individuals. At the $1 price point Bachelors and Bachelorettes around the world might purchase these as frequently as Condoms.
- corin_ 15y agoThe title in the nature.com report includes "in the developing world", so I wonder if this will be one of those products that doesn't really get targetted towards US/EU - where, while we may not have HIV problems anywhere near as bad as in Africa, but a $1 15 minute test would still be insanely useful.
- d0ne 15y agoEven if they don't intend to market this to the US I will do whatever I can to see that it is easily available here.
- thestranger 15y agoAre you involved in the project?
- d0ne 15y agoNo. Innovation in practical use medical technologies is one of my personal passions and frequently on the receiving end of my philanthropy.
- thestranger 15y agoWell kudos to you, good sir.
- araneae 15y agoWe don't need a cheap ELISA test here- it's already pretty cheap. What we need is a cheap molecular test, which can detect HIV during early stage infection, when people who are HIV positive are 40 times more likely to transmit the disease.
- rcfox 15y agoMaybe a $5/$10 price tag North America could help keep the price around $1 in Africa.
- Shenglong 15y agoYou know what would be a fantastic sub-market for this? Bars and clubs in college towns. Regardless of whether you believe 1-nighters are moral or not, they're going to keep happening. Might as well promote safety and reduce the spread of STIs. Edit: I don't mean this should be an alternative to traditional protection. It just adds another layer of certainty.
- raganwald 15y agoI speculate it would do more harm than good. Safe sex practices are important even if you have a means of lowering the risk of HIV.
- wisty 15y agoIt's a risk. But the same could be said for condoms in nightclubs. Generally, the best public safety campaigns work are "defense in depth". You discourage sex in general, discourage unsafe sex, discourage casual sex, discourage polygamy, provide condoms, and encourage tests. It all generally works, as long as you don't treat any of it as a magic bullet. It's the extremists who either think a) abstinence is the only protection; or b) causal sex is fine as long as you take precautions; who cause problems, as they tend to discourage defense in depth. So ideally, they would have an ambiguously enthusiastic "Over 90% accurate!" blurb, and be packaged with a condom or two.
- mike-cardwell 15y ago"causal sex is fine as long as you take precautions" is an "extremist" view?
- mike-cardwell 15y agoIsn't this the same line of reasoning that the Catholic church uses to try to prevent the spread of condoms in certain parts of the World?
- raganwald 15y ago
- Robin_Message 15y agoA 6% false positive rate? You don't want anyone taking this without probable cause then, else you're going to get a metric crap-ton of people going to their doctor's and having to have a full workup done. Edit to clarify: My point was that just because it was cheap doesn't mean it'll ever be sold to the public. Apart from anything else, consider the psychological impact of discovering you (may) have HIV from a test kit you picked up from next to the Oreos on a whim.
- d0ne 15y agoIf you do some searching around you will find 3% to 5% false positive for blood test is not uncommon.
- raganwald 15y agoThis is true of most tests. When he likelihood of a false positive is significant in relation to the expected incidence, you need corroboration such as symptoms developing before choosing to run the tests. Sidebar: This is misunderstood by people criticizing doctors who refuse to run tests without corroborating evidence. It's not just the money/scarce resources, it's the problem of false positives dominating actual positives.
- jcoder 15y agoOf course at $1/15m/test, a battery of tests is practically built in to the price. If the instructions are to "take three cards and put a drop of blood on each," and that it isn't a positive result unless all three agree, you've solved that problem.
- carbocation 15y agoWorks for medical professionals, but I think to sell this to the general public, those three cards should be baked in together to avoid confusion.
- danvet 15y agoHighly unlikely that three runs of the same test are fully independant, i.e. they might match all on the same antibody which is similar to an HIV one but not due to a HIV. You likely only prevent operation goof-ups like "oops, spilled a bit of blood from the needle of my bro here ..." (or something less fancy and more likely). Which is why in practice you run a different test to confirm results.
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- dstein 15y agoAt this price, countries should just purchase a test for everyone, and eradicate HIV.
- ceejayoz 15y agoHow would testing everyone eradicate HIV? You'd need to remove the genitals of anyone who tested positive, which I'd imagine would be a little difficult to get through most democratic legislatures.
- corin_ 15y agoWhile his exact point was rather moronic, you could lessen the idea and have a good plan. Sure, testing everybody in Africa wouldn't get rid of HIV, it would do far more good than just offering them for $1, and it would be a huge step towards eradication - though definitely not the final step.
- dstein 15y ago7 Billion people, $7 Billion dollars to identify everyone with HIV (* plus administration costs). Sure, it won't immediately cure eliminate HIV overnight but it would be a start.
- com 15y agoJust like most other disease control campaigns, you appeal to people to change their behaviour, you use social control to support their choice to comply and ultimately you use laws and the iron fist of the state (see smoking or leprosy as good examples). Seriously, in campaigns to minimise HIV transmission in much of the rich world, they generally use self-interest, people's feelings about their loved ones and the broader sense of social concern as drivers, and above all, non-judgemental honest information - that has worked pretty well in many places (although concern about rapid infection growth in some communities amongst young men-who-have-sex-with-men has been growing recently). Fear-based campaigning hasn't had a particularly good track record in public health campaigning, at least as far as I recall (just one statistical analysis of road-safety campaigns: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/1839/1/1839.pdf http://eprints.qut.edu.au/1839/1/1839.pdf)
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- alexholehouse 15y agoI think it's worth pointing out that while this is great tech, it's still relying on antibody detection, and the incubation period between infection and antibody production can be anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months. However, you yourself become infectious from a couple of days after infection, and in fact there's often a really high viral load in these early few weeks/months before antibodies start being produced. Long story short, for the 2-6 months after you first become infected the test would return negative, but you'd still be highly infectious.
- araneae 15y ago40 TIMES more infectious. To emphasize how important this is. Some researchers estimate up to 1/2 of new infections are from people who would test negative in this test.
- ikarous 15y agoI really doubt the "no human interpretation" part of the Engadget article. I've been involved in HIV education as part of the gay community, and this sort of kit worries me greatly. If the test is an antibody based test, then it could do far more harm than good by giving uneducated users a false sense of security: a negative result does not mean that you don't have HIV. While I'm sure that everyone on HN understands the seroconversion window period, this is simply not the case in the larger community. Ignorance about HIV is widespread. I cannot even begin to count the number of people who believe that pulling out before ejaculating affords some sort of magical protection from the virus. These are the same people who upon seeing a negative result would assume that they're safe without condoms. The CDC states that the window period for detectable HIV antibody formation is three months; however, this figure is based on first generation HIV tests and is considered somewhat conservative. Public health experts like H. Hunter Handsfield state that detectable antibodies usually form in four to six weeks. Whatever figure you choose to believe, it's a pretty significant time period. And it's a deadly one. It's during the window period that an HIV infected person is most infectious. Their viral loads are off the chart and they can unknowingly infect multiple people in a short period of time. The "cure" for HIV is the same as it has always been: education and safer sex practices. HIV is largely a preventable disease. I would be okay with personal test kits if they were bundled with extremely clear educational packets printed in multiple languages. But this particular kit is advertised too much like a silver bullet to assure me that the manufacturers are anywhere near that responsible.
- mrspandex 15y ago>> While I'm sure that everyone on HN understands the seroconversion window period... I don't. Care to explain?
- wrl 15y agoUsually, an HIV test doesn't test for presence of the virus itself; it tests for the antibodies your immune system develops in response to infection. The "window period" is the span of time between contracting the virus and the presence of detectable antibodies, which can be up to 6 months in some cases (though it's usually shorter). During this period, a person will test negative for HIV even though he or she is infected with the virus (and, worse, is contagious). Newer tests have been developed that test for presence of the virus's RNA, shortening the window period to about 21 days (if I recall correctly), but they are more expensive and much, much less widespread.
- badclient 15y agoAs someone who had a false positive not long ago, I am not gonna be using this anytime soon.
- gegegege 15y agoThese will never be available over the counter because they would lead to a rash of suicides by people who test positive and are infected as well as the false positives. HIV testing is generally done in conjunction with professional support and not something that should be done at home.
- jdietrich 15y agoStatistical note: With a 4-6% false positive rate, this device is only useful where there is a very high probability of infection. In much of the developed world where HIV infection rates are a fraction of one percent, this would mean that the overwhelming majority of positive tests are false positives.
- nazgulnarsil 15y agothe article claims a 0% false negative rate. This is a MUCH more important claim. False positives are fine, if scary, you go and get a proper test the next day.