What if the means of taking a blood test to check for viruses transmits a virus? Isn't it ironic....don't you think?
Remember, though, that we're talking about things like the flu virus, which can mutate slightly and make you sick again. So, all the different strains of the flu virus would be considered "one virus" by this test, which would help explain why the number is so low. 10 is rather surprising, even with that caveat, so it might turn out that this is some sloppy reporting.
Clicking through to the underlying study, this is right. That's 10 out of 206 species, not 10 out of 1000+ strains.
There are over two hundred distinct viruses that can infect humans. Most of us only have anti-bodies for 5%?
Why would the described procedure not distinguish antibodies against different flu viruses, since our immune system clearly does -- that's mainly why we get sick again every year, but not twice in one year, isn't it?
Probably requires too great of a sensitivity, plus you'd have to change the test every time a new strain appeared.
The way the process is described, I don't see how they avoid that sensibility. They are using the very molecular surface to which the immune system either responds or does not respond, aren't they?
So? The immune system doesn't make precise determinations as to what kind of a virus has infected the body. You can be exposed to one strain of a virus, but gain immunity to a number of other different strains of that virus because of the one exposure. This test is looking for antibodies which a person has produced, not the actual viruses, so it's not going to be highly detailed without a lot of work.
But again, shouldn't the categorisation pretty much follow along the lines of our immunities? I gain defences against one flu strain one year. The next year, there's a new strain, and I get sick again. Shouldn't that turn up as two different immunities, if this test takes its categories directly from our immune system?
Again, that would require a constant revision of the test. It's testing for known viruses as a way to identify what someone's been exposed to. If you're trying to find out what killed someone, and symptoms don't match the flu, but seem closely related to ebola, you don't really care if they've had 30 different strains of the flu in their life, you're just interested if it's ebola or a completely unknown disease.
From the CDC flu vaccine FAQ: ---------------- Can I get seasonal flu even though I got a flu vaccine this year? Yes. There is still a possibility you could get the flu even if you got vaccinated. The ability of flu vaccine to protect a person depends on various factors, including the age and health status of the person being vaccinated, and also the similarity or “match” between the viruses used to make the vaccine and those circulating in the community. If the viruses in the vaccine and the influenza viruses circulating in the community are closely matched, vaccine effectiveness is higher. If they are not closely matched, vaccine effectiveness can be reduced. However, it’s important to remember that even when the viruses are not closely matched, the vaccine can still protect many people and prevent flu-related complications. Such protection is possible because antibodies made in response to the vaccine can provide some protection (called cross-protection) against different but related influenza viruses. ---------------- So antibodies for one flu strain offer protection against all flu strains, but the protection is greater for the most closely related strains. There is a structure to all flu-antibodies that is essentially the same, and that differentiates them from antibodies to other classes of viruses. So identifying antibodies as flu antibodies is a much easier task than identifying the particular strain which the antibodies most effectively fight. You could, of course, get a count of all the different flu antibodies that show up, but that would be more and costlier work and still wouldn't tell you which strains you've been exposed to.
