A rapid point of care diagnostic kit that can detect Hendra Virus has been developed by scientists at the University of Queensland.
Hendra virus is a serious zoonotic infectious disease affecting horses and occasionally humans. It is transmitted by flying foxes shedding the virus in their saliva, urine, aborted foetuses and/or reproductive fluids. Horses are thought to contract the virus by ingesting feed or water contaminated with one of these sources of infection.
University of Queensland (UQ) vets can now diagnose the deadly Hendra virus in horses in under an hour, rather than taking days with existing diagnostic techniques.
Veterinarian Professor Ben Ahern said a rapid point-of-care diagnostic test to detect Hendra infections in horses has been sorely needed for decades.
“Hendra virus kills humans and horses alike – the virus spreads to horses from flying foxes, with an infected horse occasionally passing the infection on to humans,” Professor Ahern said.
“Without vaccination, the virus has a case fatality rate of 57% among humans and 79% among horses – it’s incredibly deadly.
“Rather than sending samples off to a lab, which risks an outbreak in the meantime, our testing protocol takes routine samples from a possibly infected horse and inactivates any virus that may be present in those samples.
“Following a heat treatment step of samples to inactivate the virus, these non-infectious samples are then tested using a handy molecular diagnostics machine – known as a LAMP Genie III – which is about the size of a box of tissues and is battery powered and completely portable.
“This process gives us results in under one hour, which is incredibly fast when compared to the many days it may take from collection of samples, getting them tested at an external lab and obtaining results.
“Horses aren’t suffering in the interim and humans giving care to them can avoid becoming exposed.”
Development of the point-of-care Hendra virus LAMP test has now advanced to the manufacturing stage and commercial kits are currently being produced.
Once approved by the Queensland Chief Veterinary Officer, the Genie machine and associated Hendra virus LAMP kits will be available for veterinarians to purchase and use.
“Due to the cost and technical training required, these tests will likely be performed by veterinarians or large equestrian bodies with veterinarian assistance,” Professor Ahern said.
“However, with the mobile capacity of this testing system, they can go directly to a farm to diagnose a suspected case, expanding treatment options for horses.”
For more details, see:
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2021/07/no-horsing-around-super-fast-hendra-test-developed
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