2023-05-16 13:00:00
Ellen Carbo and Jutte de Vries.© Publicity photo
Mary Kroft
Leiden
The LUMC is the first hospital in the Netherlands to be able to trace the cause of an unknown viral infection. Molecular biologist Ellen Carbo has further developed the technique for this, the Leiden academic hospital reports in a press release. She will receive her PhD on this subject on 17 May.
Hospitals from the Netherlands and abroad are already sending patient samples to Leiden with the request to identify the culprit so that adequate therapy can be initiated.
Normally, hospitals perform standard tests to determine whether an infection in a patient is caused by a bacteria or a virus. It often happens that it is never found.
Suitable
Clinical virologist Jutte de Vries of the LUMC, together with medical molecular microbiologists and bioinformaticians, set up a method to detect all possible viruses at once, including the new viruses. Together with PhD candidate Ellen Carbo, she optimized the technique and made it suitable for diagnostics in patients. The test now offers 90 to 95 percent certainty.
The test is only used for unexplained infections. “The technique is still too expensive to apply it at an earlier stage of diagnosis,” says De Vries. “But if it becomes cheaper and the test is further developed, I can imagine that this will be more accessible in the future.”
The LUMC is initiating the further development of the test with the European Society for Clinical Virology.
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