Charges include $1.1 billion in alleged telemedicine and fraudulent clinical laboratory testing
Nearly 200 individuals in 25 states are facing charges for alleged participation in a variety of healthcare frauds, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release. This major enforcement action involves telemedicine and clinical laboratory testing as well as other healthcare schemes. In total, the DOJ is alleging the defendants are responsible for $2.75 billion in intended losses and $1.6 billion in actual losses.
The charges include:
$1.1 billion in alleged telemedicine and clinical laboratory fraud.
As part of the action, the government has seized more than $231 million in assets, including cash, luxury vehicles, and gold.
Monica Cooper, JD (above), a DOJ trial attorney and member of the Texas Strike Force, is one of two attorneys prosecuting the case against Harold Albert “Al” Knowles of Delray Beach, Fla., and Chantal Swart of Boca Raton, Fla., in the DOJ’s latest crackdown on healthcare fraud. Charges against Knowles and Swart include conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and paying/receiving healthcare kickbacks in a $359 million scheme to bill Medicare for medically unnecessary genetic tests at two Houston clinical laboratories. (Photo copyright: US Department of Justice.)
Houston-Area Labs Charged in $359 Million Scheme
In one case, the government charged Florida residents Harold Albert “Al” Knowles and Chantal Swart in a $359 million scheme involving fraudulent Medicare billing for medically unnecessary genetic tests. Knowles owned two Houston-area labs—Bio Choice Laboratories, Inc. and Bios Scientific, LLC—while Swart ran a telemarketing operation. According to DOJ case summaries, the government alleges that Knowles paid kickbacks to Swart to obtain DNA samples and doctors’ orders for tests.
“Knowles, Swart, and others obtained access to tens of thousands of beneficiaries across the United States by targeting them with deceptive telemarketing campaigns,” the indictments allege. “Call center representatives—who were almost never medical professionals—often prompted beneficiaries to disclose their medical conditions and induced them to agree to genetic testing regardless of medical necessity.”
In addition, “Knowles, Swart, and others agreed that Swart and others would pay illegal kickbacks and bribes to purported telemedicine companies to obtain signed doctors’ orders for genetic testing after only a brief telemedicine visit,” the indictment stated. “Knowles and his co-conspirators knew that the purported telemedicine companies’ physicians were rarely, if ever, the beneficiaries’ treating physicians and rarely, if ever, used the genetic testing results in the beneficiaries’ treatment.”
Dallas-Area Labs Charged in $335 Million Scheme
In another case, the federal government charged that the owner of two Dallas-area clinical laboratories engaged in a $335 million Medicare billing scheme.
Keith Gray, owner of Axis Professional Labs, LLC and Kingdom Health Laboratory, LLC, “offered and paid kickbacks to marketers in exchange for their referral to Axis and Kingdom of Medicare beneficiaries’ DNA samples, personally identifiable information (including Medicare numbers), and signed doctors’ orders authorizing medically unnecessary cardio genetic testing,” the government alleged. “As part of the scheme, the marketers engaged other companies to solicit Medicare beneficiaries through telemarketing and to engage in ‘doctor chase,’ i.e., to obtain the identity of beneficiaries’ primary care physicians and pressure them to approve genetic testing orders for patients who purportedly had already been ‘qualified’ for the testing.”
Other Clinical Laboratory and Healthcare Fraud Cases
DOJ attorneys charged the owners of Innovative Genomics, a clinical laboratory in San Antonio, in a $65 million scheme to bill Medicare and the COVID-19 Uninsured Program for “medically unnecessary and otherwise non-reimbursable COVID-19 and genetic testing,” according to the indictment. Also charged were two patient recruiters who allegedly received kickbacks for referring patients.
Richard Abrazi of New York City was charged in a $60 million Medicare billing scheme. Abrazi owned two clinical laboratories: Enigma Management Corp. and Up Services Inc. Both operated as Alliance Laboratories.
“Abrazi and others engaged in a scheme to pay and receive kickbacks and bribes in exchange for laboratory tests, including genetic tests, that Enigma and Up billed to Medicare,” the indictment alleges. “Abrazi and others also allegedly paid and received kickbacks and bribes in exchange for arranging for the ordering of medically unnecessary genetic tests that were ineligible for Medicare reimbursement.”
The DOJ charged Brian Cotugno, of Auburn, Ga., and James Matthew Thorton “Bo” Potter, of Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., in a $20 million Medicare billing scheme. Cotugno, the indictment alleges, sold Medicare Beneficiary Identification Numbers (BINs) to two Alabama laboratories co-owned by Potter.
“The BINs were used to bill Medicare tens of millions of dollars for OTC COVID-19 test kits, many of which had not been requested by the beneficiaries,” the government alleged.
These are only a few of the recent cases the DOJ brought against defendants nationwide for healthcare, telemedicine, and clinical laboratory fraud. Both Dark Daily and our sister publication The Dark Report have covered these ongoing investigations for years. And we will continue to do so because it’s important that lab managers and pathology group leaders are aware of the lengths to which the DOJ is pursuing bad actors in healthcare.
Study findings could lead to new clinical laboratory diagnostics that give pathologists a more detailed understanding about certain types of cancer
New studies proving artificial intelligence (AI) can be used effectively in clinical laboratory diagnostics and personalized healthcare continue to emerge. Scientists in the UK recently trained an AI model using machine learning and deep learning to enable earlier, more accurate detection of 13 different types of cancer.
DNA stores genetic information in sequences of four nucleotide bases: A (adenine), T (thymine), G (guanine) and C (cytosine). These bases can be modified through DNA methylation. There are millions of DNA methylation markers in every single cell, and they change in the early stages of cancer development.
One common characteristic of many cancers is an epigenetic phenomenon called aberrant DNA methylation. Modifications in DNA can influence gene expression and are observable in cancer cells. A methylation profile can differentiate tumor types and subtypes and changes in the process often come before malignancy appears. This renders methylation very useful in catching cancers while in the early stages.
However, deciphering slight changes in methylation patterns can be extremely difficult. According to the scientists, “identifying the specific DNA methylation signatures indicative of different cancer types is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.”
Nevertheless, the researchers believe identifying these changes could become a useful biomarker for early detection of cancers, which is why they built their AI models.
“Computational methods such as this model, through better training on more varied data and rigorous testing in the clinic, will eventually provide AI models that can help doctors with early detection and screening of cancers,” said Shamith Samarajiwa, PhD (above), Senior Lecturer and Group Leader, Computational Biology and Genomic Data Science, Imperial College London, in a news release. “This will provide better patient outcomes.” With additional research, clinical laboratories and pathologists may soon have new cancer diagnostics based on these AI models. (Photo copyright: University of Cambridge.)
The researchers then used a combination of machine learning and deep learning techniques to train an AI algorithm to examine DNA methylation patterns of the collected data. The algorithm identified and differentiated specific cancer types, including breast, liver, lung and prostate, from non-cancerous tissue with a 98.2% accuracy rate. The team evaluated their AI model by comparing the results to independent research.
In their Biology Methods and Protocols paper, the authors noted that their model does require further training and testing and stressed that “the important aspect of this study was the use of an explainable and interpretable core AI model.” They also claim their model could help medical professionals understand “the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the development of cancer.”
Using AI to Lower Cancer Rates Worldwide
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cancer ranks as the second leading cause of death in the United States with 608,371 deaths reported in 2022. The leading cause of death in the US is heart disease with 702,880 deaths reported in the same year.
Globally cancer diagnoses and death rates are even more alarming. World Health Organization (WHO) data shows an estimated 20 million new cancer cases worldwide in 2022, with 9.7 million persons perishing from various cancers that year.
The UK researchers are hopeful their new AI model will help lower those numbers. They state in their paper that “most cancers are treatable and curable if detected early enough.”
More research and studies are needed to confirm the results of this study, but it appears to be a very promising line of exploration and development of using AI to detect, identify, and diagnose cancer earlier. This type of probing could provide pathologists with improved tools for determining the presence of cancer and lead to better patient outcomes.
Researchers have been exploring the role metabolites play in the development of disease for some time. Alzheimer’s is a progressive, degenerative brain disease typically linked to age, family history, and deposits of certain proteins in the brain that cause the brain to shrink and brain cells to eventually die. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, accounting for an estimated 60% to 80% of all dementia cases. It has no cure or proven method of prevention, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
There are nearly seven million people living with Alzheimer’s in the US and 55 million people worldwide live with it or other forms of dementia. Patients are usually over the age of 65, but it can present in younger patients as well.
“Gut metabolites are the key to many physiological processes in our bodies, and for every key there is a lock for human health and disease,” said Feixiong Cheng, PhD (above), founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Genome Center, in a news release. “The problem is that we have tens of thousands of receptors and thousands of metabolites in our system, so manually figuring out which key goes into which lock has been slow and costly. That’s why we decided to use AI.” Findings from the study could lead to new clinical laboratory biomarkers for dementia screening tests. (Photo copyright: Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.)
Changes to Gut Bacteria
Metabolites are substances released by bacteria when the body breaks down food, drugs, chemicals, or its own tissue, such as fat or muscle. They fuel cellular processes within the body that may be either helpful or harmful to an individual’s health.
The Cleveland Clinic researchers believe that preventing detrimental interactions between metabolites and cells could aid in disease prevention. Previous studies have shown that Alzheimer’s patients do experience changes in their gut bacteria as the disease progresses.
To complete their study, the scientists used AI and machine learning (ML) to analyze more than 1.09 million potential metabolite-receptor pairs to determine the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s.
They then examined genetic and proteomic data from Alzheimer’s disease studies and looked at different receptor protein structures and metabolite shapes to determine how different metabolites can affect brain cells. The researchers identified significant interactions between the gut and the brain.
They discovered that the metabolite agmatine was most likely to interact with a receptor known as CA3R in Alzheimer’s patients. Agmatine is believed to protect brain cells from inflammation and damage. They found that when Alzheimer’s-affected neurons are treated with agmatine, CA3R levels reduce. Levels of phosphorylated tau proteins, a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, lowered as well.
The researchers also studied a metabolite called phenethylamine. They found that it too could significantly alter the levels of phosphorylated tau proteins, a result they believe could be beneficial to Alzheimer’s patients.
New Therapies for Alzheimer’s, Other Diseases
One of the most compelling results observed in the study was the identification of specific G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that interact with metabolites present in the gut microbiome. By focusing on orphan GPCRs, the researchers determined that certain metabolites could activate those receptors, which could help generate new therapies for Alzheimer’s.
“We specifically focused on Alzheimer’s disease, but metabolite-receptor interactions play a role in almost every disease that involves gut microbes,” said Feixiong Cheng, PhD, founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Genome Center in the news release. “We hope that our methods can provide a framework to progress the entire field of metabolite-associated diseases and human health.”
The team plans to use AI technology to further develop and study the interactions between genetic and environmental factors on human health and disease progression. More research and studies are needed, but results of the Cleveland Clinic study suggest new biomarkers for targeted therapies and clinical laboratory tests for dementia diseases may soon follow.
Proof-of-concept study may eventually lead to new clinical laboratory urine tests for fast, non-invasive detection of cancer
Here is the latest example of researchers finding useful biomarkers in urine for diagnosing certain cancers. The discovery comes from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center, where, in a proof-of-concept study, scientists developed a urine-based test that screens for circulating free DNA (cfDNA) fragments (aka, cell-free DNA) released by tumors in the head and neck. If they confirm these findings, it’s possible the technology could be adapted into a non-invasive clinical laboratory test for selected cancers.
One such cancer is human papillomavirus (HPV) which, though “widely recognized for causing cervical cancer” is “increasingly found to cause cancers in the mouth, throat, and other head and neck regions,” according to a U-M Medical School press release.
The U-M study findings could lead to an early, non-invasive test for the detection of cancer, as compared to traditional urine or blood-based liquid biopsy testing.
“In this study, we provide evidence to support the hypothesis that conventional assays do not detect ultrashort fragments found in urine since they are designed to support longer DNA fragments. Our team used an unconventional approach to develop a urine test for HPV-positive head and neck cancer ctDNA detection,” said Chandan Bhambhani, PhD (above), Research Lab Specialist Intermediate at University of Michigan and co-first author of the study, in a news release. Clinical laboratories may soon have a new urine-based test for detecting cancer. (Photo copyright: LinkedIn.)
According to the researchers, benefits of urine testing include:
Testing with urine is convenient for people who may be unable to access healthcare and phlebotomy services.
Urine has low biohazard risk and may be easily collected in large amounts, compared with blood.
Ongoing collection of urine could make way for TR-ctDNA “kinetics to be used as a high time-resolution biomarker” to monitor patients’ response to treatment.
However, urine, the researchers cautioned, must be analyzed in a different manner if it is to be comparable in efficiency to blood-based ctDNA testing.
“There have been mixed reports on the efficiency of TR-ctDNA detection compared with that of blood ctDNA. A potentially crucial factor for the analysis of TR-ctDNA is knowing the length of TR-ctDNA fragments present in urine, because this affects assay design for optimal sensitivity in TR-ctDNA detection,” the researchers explained.
New Assay Detects Ultrashort DNA Fragments
To complete their study, the U-M researchers developed an ultrashort HPV droplet digital PCR (polymerase chain reaction) assay that enabled detection of TR-ctDNA from HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPV OPSCC), BioTechniques reported.
The assay was made to target the HPV16 E6 (Human papillomavirus 16) gene and to measure TR-ctDNA in patients with HPV OPSCC, the JCI Insight paper noted.
“The HPV16 E6 gene represents a highly recurrent ctDNA target in the population of patients with HPV OPSCC,” the researchers wrote in JCI Insight, adding:
Targeting ultrashort fragments was essential “for robust TR-ctDNA detection.”
Results in urine with patients with HPV OPSCC was consistent with results from plasma ctDNA.
The test, still in the discovery phase, was mailed to patients who were being treated for the disease and who reside within 100 miles of Ann Arbor, Mich. They returned urine samples for testing at the U-M lab and to get insights into possible post-treatment needs.
“Using longitudinal urine samples from a small case series, we showed proof of concept for early detection of cancer recurrence. Thus, our results indicate that by targeting ultrashort DNA fragments, TR-ctDNA becomes a viable approach for HPV OPSCC detection and potentially for cancer recurrence monitoring after treatment,” the authors wrote.
Further Studies, Possible Test Expansion
HPV infection—and especially HPV type 16—is a growing risk factor for oropharyngeal cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The U-M Rogel Cancer Center scientists plan more studies to leverage the information urine may carry about an individual’s health. The researchers intend to expand the scope of their new test to other cancers including breast cancer and acute myeloid leukemia.
“The test that has been developed has detected cancer far earlier than would typically happen based on clinical imaging. As such, these promising results have given us the confidence to broaden the scope of this study, seeking to expanding distribution even further,” said J. Chad Brenner, PhD, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, U-M Medicine, and co-senior author of the study, in the news release.
The University of Michigan Health study exemplifies scientists’ commitment to new categories of biomarkers that can be used for medical laboratory tests and prescription drugs. And by focusing on urine, the researchers made it possible for patients to collect specimens themselves and send them to the medical laboratory for analysis and reporting.
Because of their big share of patient prescriptions, the three largest PBMs are about to undergo scrutiny via Congressional reports and looming lawsuits that call out questionable practices
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are finding themselves under scrutiny from both Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations into drug pricing as well as recent Congressional hearings into anticompetitive practices.
Because of how PBMs have captured the lion’s share of patient prescriptions away from retail pharmacies in the United States during the past 15 years, pathologists and clinical laboratory managers may want to track how Congress and federal antitrust regulators respond to this development. The issue is the high cost of prescription drugs for patients and the role of PBMs in keeping drug prices high to optimize their profits.
House representatives pressed the executives for “steering patients to pharmacies the PBM owns and favoring more expensive brand-name drugs on their formularies, or list of covered drugs, which result in higher rebates paid to them by drugmakers,” Healthcare Dive noted.
In its final report, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability found that “PBMs inflate prescription drug costs and interfere with patient care for their own financial benefit.”
Though hearings on PBMs have been increasing, the last time PBM executives testified on the Hill was before the Senate Committee on Finance in 2019, according to Healthcare Dive.
“Spread pricing and rebates benefit PBMs and have helped the three largest PBMs monopolize the pharmaceutical market … these self-benefitting practices only serve to help their bottom line rather than patients,” said Chairman James Comer (above) during a meeting of the federal Committee on Oversight and Accountability. “PBMs have been allowed to hide in the shadows for far too long. I look forward to the Oversight Committee continuing to work in a bipartisan fashion to shine a light on how these PBMs have undermined community pharmacies, raised prescriptions drug prices, and jeopardized patient care.” Clinical laboratory executives may want to track efforts by Congress to rein in PBMs so as to reduce the cost of prescription drugs to patients. (Photo copyright: US Federal Government/Public Domain.)
Turning up the Heat on PBMs
The spotlight began to grow on PBM practices back in 2023. Since then, PBMs have been the focus of three congressional hearings. The late July meeting came just hours after Chairman James Comer, R-KY, presented his report following a 32-month-long investigation “into how PBMs raise prices and reduce consumer choice,” Healthcare Dive reported.
Comer’s research found that “PBMs have used their position as middlemen to cement anticompetitive policies which have increased prescription drug costs, hurt independent pharmacies, and harmed patient care,” according to a press release announcing the upcoming hearing with the executives of the three largest PBMs.
Comer’s report uncovered “300 examples of the three PBMs preferring medications that cost at least $500 more per claim than a safe alternative medication excluded from their formularies,” Healthcare Dive noted.
Coming Lawsuits, Public Opinion
While the Congressional hearings put pressure on the three PBMs, a new threat looms on the horizon—multiple lawsuits—including one from the FTC “over their tactics for negotiating prices for drugs including insulin, after a two-year investigation into whether the companies steer patients away from less-expensive medicines,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
State attorney generals and independent pharmacies are lining up with lawsuits targeting PBM’s questionable business practices as well, Healthcare Dive reported.
While PBMs maintain their innocence, public opinion differs. An independent survey from KFF found that approximately three out of 10 individuals surveyed reported not taking a prescribed medicine due to expensive costs.
“This includes about one in five who report they have not filled a prescription or took an over-the counter drug instead (21%), and 12% who say they have cut pills in half or skipped a dose because of the cost,” KFF reported.
Further, 82% of those surveyed described the cost of prescription drugs to be unreasonable. Still, 65% described the costs as being easily affordable, with the biggest challenge going to those with a household income of less than $40,000.
PBMs Push Back
In response to the backlash, the PBMs brought their own report to Congress, prepared by global consulting firm Compass Lexecon. It showed that “PBMs pass through almost all rebates to plan sponsors and have operating margins below 5% in recent years,” Healthcare Dive reported.
During their testimony, Conway said that Optum Rx saves over $2,000 per person annually. Kautzner claimed Express Scripts brought $64 billion in savings to patients last year and kept “out-of-pocket costs on a per-prescription basis at $15, despite brand manufacturers raising drug prices on 60% of those products,” Healthcare Dive reported.
Joyner said CVS Caremark experienced “little or no competition” from the pharmaceutical industry for brand name drugs. He blamed the pharmaceutical industry for drug pricing increases, Healthcare Drive reported.
“Let me be clear, we do not contribute to the rising list prices. Hampering our ability to negotiate lower drug cost … would only remove an essential tool and our ability to deliver lower cost for medications,” Joyner told the Congressional committee.
House representatives were not moved.
“On one hand we have PBMs claiming to reduce prescription drug prices and on the other hand we have the Federal Trade Commission, we have major media outlets like The New York Times, and we have at least eight different attorneys generals, Democrats and Republicans, who all say PBMs are inflating drug costs,” said Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill), Healthcare Dive reported.
“This is why just about every state now is taking up PBM reform,” Comer said. “There’s a credibility issue.”
Because there has been a parallel concentration of market share for clinical laboratory testing among a handful of billion-dollar national lab corporations, clinical laboratory managers may want to follow these events. They are examples of federal regulators investigating the business practices of a major healthcare sector while, at the same time, members of Congress look for ways to lower healthcare costs. Prescription drugs is a high-profile target.
At some future point, the cost of genetic testing could also become a target when Congress seeks other healthcare sectors in their goal to control medical expenses.
Researchers used CRISPR-based assays to develop new clinical laboratory point-of-care blood test which boasts accuracy, affordability, and accessibility
According to UPI, the test can “distinguish between influenza A and influenza B—the two main types of seasonal flu—as well as identifying more virulent strains like H1N1 and H3N2.”
Many research teams are working to develop paper-based diagnostic screening tests because of their lower cost to produce and usefulness in remote locations. Should this near-patient point-of-care test become clinically viable, it could mean shorter times to answer, enabling speedier diagnoses and earlier start of treatment.
It also means patient specimens do not have to be transported to a clinical laboratory for testing. And reduced cost per test makes it possible to test more people. This serves the public health aspect of monitoring outbreaks of influenza and other diseases and gives hope for improved treatment outcomes.
“Being able to tease apart what strain or subtype of influenza is infecting a patient has repercussions both for treating them and public health interventions, said Jon Arizti Sanz, PhD, co-lead study author and postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, in a Broad Institute news release.
“Ultimately, we hope these tests will be as simple as rapid antigen tests, and they’ll still have the specificity and performance of a nucleic acid test that would normally be done in a laboratory setting,” Cameron A. Myhrvold, PhD (above), Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in New Jersey, told CIDRAP. Influenza tests that can be performed at the point of care and in remote locations may reduce the number of screening tests performed by clinical laboratories. (Photo copyright: Michael James Butts/Hertz Foundation.)
Her team developed their tests using Streamlined Highlighting of Infections to Navigate Epidemics (SHINE), “a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-based RNA detection platform,” the researchers wrote in their Journal of Molecular Diagnostics paper.
“SHINE has a runtime of 90 minutes, can be used at room temperature and only requires an inexpensive heat block to heat the reaction. The SHINE technology has previously been used to identify SARS-CoV-2 and later to distinguish between the Delta and Omicron variants,” Bioanalysis Zone reported.
“The test uses genetically engineered enzymes to identify specific sequences of viral RNA in samples,” the researchers told UPI. Originally designed to detect COVID-19, the team adapted the technology to detect influenza in 2022 “with the aim of creating a screening tool that could be used in the field or in clinics rather than hospitals or high-tech diagnostic labs,” they said.
Influenza A and B as well as H1N1 and H3N2 subtypes were the targets of the four SHINE assays. “When tested on clinical samples, these optimized assays achieved 100% concordance with quantitative RT-PCR. Duplex Cas12a/Cas13a SHINE assays were also developed to detect two targets simultaneously,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
The team used “20 nasal swabs from people with flu-like symptoms during the 2020-2021 flu season, nasal fluid from healthy people as the control, and 2016-2021 influenza sequences downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Information Influenza (NICB) database. They compared the results with those from quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests,” CIDRAP reported.
The original 2020 test (shown above) takes 90 minutes to develop at room temperature. The test developers aim to drop this down to 15 minutes. In comparison, typical polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing requires medical laboratories to have specialized equipment, trained staff, and prolonged processing times, the Broad Institute news release notes. (Photo copyright: Broad Institute.)
Implications of the New Tests
The ease of the new tests is an important development since approximately only 1% of individuals who come down with the flu see doctors for testing, according to the news release. And researchers had this in mind, looking at speed, accuracy, and affordability as a means to “improve outbreak response and infection care around the world,” UPI reported.
There are great benefits to strain differentiation that be achieved with the new test. Doctors are hopeful the test will help dial in the best treatment plans for patients since some strains are resistant to the antiviral medication oseltamivir (Tamiflu), UPI noted. This is significant since Tamiflu “is a common antiviral,” said Sanz in the Broad Institute news release.
“These assays have the potential to expand influenza detection outside of clinical laboratories for enhanced influenza diagnosis and surveillance,” the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics paper noted. This allows for more strategic treatment planning.
“Using a paper strip readout instead of expensive fluorescence machinery is a big advancement, not only in terms of clinical care but also for epidemiological surveillance purposes,” said Ben Zhang, an MD candidate in the Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and co-first author of the study, in the Broad Institute news release.
Future Plans for Tests
“With further development, the test strip could be reprogrammed to distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and flu and recognize swine flu and avian flu, including the H5N1 subtype currently causing an outbreak in US dairy cattle,” the study authors told CIDRAP.
The team is also looking at ways to help prevent H5N1 from crossing into human contamination, Sanz told UPI.
The new Princeton/MIT/Harvard tests echo the trend to bring in affordability and ease-of-use with accurate results as an end goal. Faster results mean the best treatments for each person can start sooner and may render the transport of specimens to a clinical laboratory as a second step unnecessary.
As research teams work to develop paper-based viral tests for their plethora of benefits, clinical laboratories will want to pay close attention to this development as it can have a big implication on assisting with future outbreaks.
Additional research is needed before these tests are going to be commonplace in homes worldwide, but this first step brings inspiration and hope of what’s to come.
