New HIV Test Comes Via USB Stick

Scientists in the UK have now developed a USB stick that quickly and accurately measures the amount of HIV in a patient's blood.

According to an article in Gizmodo, the medical device was created at Imperial College London and the tech firm DNA Electronics.

Just use a simple drop of blood to measure HIV-1 levels. The device sense the HIV-1 virus through a change in acidity levels. A mobile phone chip in the USB stick concerts this info into an electrical signal that is fed into your computer or handheld device.

"[Monitoring] viral load is crucial to the success of HIV treatment," noted study lead author Graham Cooke in a statement. "At the moment, testing often requires costly and complex equipment that can take a couple of days to produce a result. We have taken the job done by this equipment, which is the size of a large photocopier, and shrunk it down to a USB chip."

This disposable test could be used by people living with HIV/AIDS across the world to monitor their own treatment. It could also be useful in remote regions, where standard HIV tests are inaccessible.

Results from the journal Scientific Reports shows that the test is highly accurate, and can produce a result in less than 30 minutes, unlike current tests, which can take as long as three days and require patients to send blood samples to a lab.

In the latest research, the USB stick tested 991 blood samples with 95 percent accuracy, with an average time to produce a new result at just 21 minutes. This could allow patients to regularly monitor their virus levels, in much the same way people with diabetes check their blood sugar levels.