Researching a New Cheaper Way to Screen for Respiratory Virus

I am working on a new way to detect a respiratory virus by doing a cell count on a nasopharyngeal swab that has been vortexed in a saline solution. A drop of this solution can be placed on a slide and stained with wright stain. I think the number of epithelial cells present on this slide is inversely proportional to the amount of virus present in the specimen and the amount of lymphocytes is directly proportional to the amount of virus present in the specimen. This test would cut the cost of screening for virus during the winter down to almost nothing. If virus is detected a more expensive reflex test could be preformed like influenza IgG, IgM, or IFA so that Tamiflu can be prescribed to the immunocompromised. If no virus is present then there is no need to preform and expensive test. I will be devising an experiment to test this hypothesis for now here is some interesting preliminary discoveries that I have made.

The following images are fields of one nasopharyngeal slide stained with Write stain that was positive for influenza A. Notice that  the few epithelial cells that are present in the fields have been destroyed either by the virus or by cytotoxic effects from interferon’s. Also note the many leukocytes present in these fields.

The following images are fields of one nasopharyngeal slide stained with Write stain that was negative for viral infection. Notice that  the epithelial cells that are present are large and healthy and note the rarity of leukocytes when compared to the positive specimen.

Healthcare Innovation Contest

Hello all I am going to enter the Healthcare innovation contest this year. My idea is based on the fact that the flu virus and other respiratory viruses activate interferon’s that result in cell death by cytotoxic T-cells reducing the cell count in the nasal cavity, and the fact that bacterial infections could have he opposite effect because of the emergence of macrophages to clear the infection. It has also been noted that bacterial infection due to the clearing of mucus secreting epithelial cells is a rare but could cause problems in this test.  I am going to preform an experiment to test this hypothesis. I will be using nasopharyngeal, and sputum specimens to preform cell counts on individuals with confirmed influenza, on healthy patients, and on patients with a bacterial infection like strep A. I will preform the cell count with a Wright stain and a high powered light microscope. I will then compare the positive flu sputum to the healthy and bacterial infected sputum,  and will do the same with the nasopharyngeal specimens. I will try to get a minimum of thirty samples so that my error rate can be within three significant figures.  If my hypothesis is correct this can be used as an at home or field screening tool for respiratory viral and bacterial infections by using the cell phone cytometer developed by by Aydogan Ozcan’s group at University of California, Los Angeles (Anal. Chem., Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/ac201587a) and described by this article http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/trick/tricks/2011_05.lasso

My research can also lead to a cheaper method of screening for respiratory viral and bacterial infections by removing the need for costly test kits and instrumentation and instead using already established instrumentation like the iris from iris diagnostic. Some might say that the viscosity of sputum is too great and will clog the instrument but this can easily be overcome with the use of sputolysum.

here is a link to the contest I am entering http://ceshealth.com/

References:

http://www.medicinenet.com/interferon/article.htm

http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/mhunt/flu.htm

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/viruses/influenzavirus.html

http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/trick/tricks/2011_05.lasso

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/10/340?fmt_view=mobile