2023-04-20 09:30:44
20 avril 2023
The days of PCR tests and other self-tests to be carried out in order to be able to return to school or work are not so far away. If the results of an experiment carried out at the University of Rennes are confirmed, swabs might one day be supplanted by used tissues to detect the presence of viruses.
During the pandemic, some parents competed in ingenuity to save their children from repeated tests, deemed too invasive. Like the diversion of baby flies, for example, which consisted of soaking the self-test swab in the mucus collected by the device rather than directly at the bottom of the little one’s nostrils. One method among others, not really validated by scientists.
And now we learn that Vincent Thibault, professor at the University of Rennes and head of the virology laboratory at the University Hospital of Rennes, has developed a technique for detecting “respiratory viral genomes on used handkerchiefs, using standard medical analysis laboratory equipment”writes the University of Rennes in a recent press release.
Nursery and school
The idea was germinating before the pandemic in the mind of this “admirer of the exploits of the scientific police”. Professor Thibault’s postulate: “If today investigators manage to detect DNA fragments on samples that are several years old, why wouldn’t it be possible to detect genomes of respiratory viruses on used handkerchiefs, a few days old? ».
Especially since medical analysis laboratories, such as that of Professor Thibault at the University Hospital of Rennes, are now equipped with increasingly efficient machines. They are capable of carrying out automated molecular biology analyses, allowing the early detection of the main infectious diseases.
The doctor-researcher and his team therefore collected thousands of used tissues from the CHU crèche and primary school. This very fine and complete follow-up, week by week, of the circulation of the main respiratory viruses in children has in particular made it possible “very early detection of the flu epidemic, since the virus appeared in this nursery 6 weeks before the flu peak of 2019 was reached in mainland France”.
Detectable for months
To confirm these results, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the team tested their method on around 30 volunteers with various respiratory symptoms. Among them, people infected with SARS-CoV-2, responsible for Covid-19. Contamination confirmed by means of the traditional swab inserted into the nose… and thanks to the used handkerchiefs that the patients had provided in parallel to the researchers.
“All the tissues made it possible to detect SARS-CoV-2, and for two thirds of them, in a more clear-cut way than by RT-PCR (reference technique for the detection of Covid, editor’s note)”. Even better : “The tissues tested were for some sent by mail, kept for several days and up to 6 months at room temperature: the viral genome remained detectable there”.
Even if this method has its limits (you have to blow your nose correctly, the work in the analysis laboratory is a little more important…), it is all the more promising since other teams have already validated the “general feasibility of this approach”. A hope no doubt shared by the children… and their parents. And a technique that is considerably more accessible and less expensive in terms of technicality.
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