Japanese Scientists Used Ostrich Cells to Make Virus-Detecting Masks that Glows Under UV Light

Masks made from ostrich antibodies that glow under ultraviolet light to detect Covid-19 have been produced by Japanese researchers.

Wearable Health Trackers

Wearable technologies, such as activity trackers and smartwatches, can give valuable information about our health and well-being. Wearables provide continuous access to real-time physiological data, unlike traditional testing in a clinical context, which may occur just a few (or fewer) times a year. This enables the detection of deviations from a person's "normal" baselines, which is a fundamentally different approach to healthcare than current practice, which mainly compares physiological measures to population statistics. The potential of wearable health technologies has become more evident during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic.

Ostrich Cell Mask

Yasuhiro Tsukamoto and his colleagues at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan made the finding, leading to low-cost viral testing at home.

Primary embryo cell cultures were propagated using an ostrich egg at 21 days of development. Routine trypsinization procedures were used to generate primary cultures of skeletal muscle cells (for fibroblasts). The capacity of ostrich embryo fibroblasts to replicate infectious bronchitis virus, paramyxovirus-1 (PMV-1), PMV-2, PMV-3, infectious bursal disease virus, quail bronchitis virus, avian reovirus, turkey coronavirus, and two ostrich-originating specimens was investigated (one of which was a possible coronavirus identified by electron microscopy).

Based on prior studies revealing the birds' great resilience to sickness, the scientists created a mask filter coated with ostrich antibodies that targeted the virus.

Testing

Test subjects wore the masks for eight hours before being removed and coated with a substance that lights under ultraviolet light if the virus is present. People afflicted with Covid wore filters that shone around their noses and mouth.

If the virus is discovered, the team intends to improve the masks to glow automatically without a special light.

Tsukamoto, a veterinary professor and the university's president has spent years studying ostriches in the hopes of harnessing their immunity to combat avian flu, allergies, and other ailments.

Tsukamoto told the Kyodo news agency that after wearing one of the unique masks, he realized his optimism for Covid. After a regular test, the diagnosis was confirmed.

In Dire Need of Virus Detector

The COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc on civilization and sparked worldwide terror. COVID-19's seemingly misleading characteristics can be attributed to its medium transmission and fatality rates compared to previous severe virus outbreaks. As a result, society overestimated the severity of the causative coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While it's critical to utilize nucleic acid-based detection kits with low false negativity (high sensitivity) early in an outbreak, low false positivity (high specificity) becomes more critical as the outbreak progresses. When the COVID-19 pandemic's lockdown period ends, having immunoassay-based tests with high specificity to identify patients who may safely return to society after recovering from SARS-CoV-2 infections becomes crucial.

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