I should be writing, but ......
As those are now available in supermarkets, shall we take a look?
So, it’s a swab, apparently not a deep swab though. Polyoxymethylene and a sponge, sterile and approved for medical use
Then we have the buffer, not sure what’s in here. It’s an antigen test so there shouldn’t be any lysis required, but maybe a deactivation step?
Then we have a drip unit with a filter, which is quite nice actually. So you can count the single droplets and filter off some buggers :D
The lateral flow assay comes with silica gel, and the “Ag” sounds too obvious for silver nano particles
Time wise 15-30 min, so it is as “rapid” as any LAMP genetic detection -_-
@L_Howes was right, it’s not silver, it’s a classic gold nanoparticle conjugate....
No surprises in here, very standard lateral flow (at the end I’ll link some videos for explaining how they work)
Sensitivity and specificity seems good, but they have a lot of interferences from other viruses (thing you’ll not have with genetic amplification tests)
Ok, less talky talky and more swabby swabby :D
Ok, this is impossible.... I don’t use contact lenses because I don’t like to poke my eyes, reaching this depth in the nose is a huge failing point of the test
While we wait for the test, let’s check the waste produced:
Silica gel (avoidable)
Swab (multimaterial)
Buffer and dripper (multimaterial)
Lateral flow (abs?)
All of them non recyclable / non biodegradable
imho

Pro: the dripper is very nice for delivering and filtering droplets (known amount of liquid)

Cons: same time of LAMP, interference from other viruses, stabbing yourself in the nose (false negative?), waste produced for a single test

Not sure what’s in the liquid, buffer?
What’s also missing in any antigen test is the amplification step, so it can only detect “high”amount of virus. And this is why you need to go as deep as possible with the swab. You need to collect as many viruses as possible.
Btw, I’m negative :)
So I guess that my main concerns here are the swab part (may give plenty of false negatives is not performed correctly) and the waste produced.
If you want to know more on how lateral flow assay work, I did an explanation here:

and here I dissect a lateral flow pregnancy test:

but I guess that next year I'll use this SARS-CoV2 lateral flow test for my course :)
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More from @V_Saggiomo

Nov 18, 2021
Spoiler for tomorrow…..
@Sander_Says is an angle grinder magician :D
@Sander_Says performing the last cut (hopefully)
It was a hard job….
Read 4 tweets
Mar 23, 2021
Finally is out, our super cheap, easy to produce in millions, almost universal, and with low waste impact nucleic acid detection (LAMP test for #COVID19) non-instrumental device. The answer is: a Nespresso capsule. The question is: why we did this? 1/n
chemrxiv.org/articles/prepr…
In a pandemic of such dimension, the centralised testing is a problem. A decentralised testing solution would simplify the detection and containment of the virus. Testing millions of people per day is unfeasible in centralised testing, while doable using tests at home 2/n
For home testing you need a test which is simple to use and incredible sturdy. LAMP is perfect (better than PCR) and many groups are working on saliva rather than swab for simplifying the process. No one was working on the device to run the LAMP and that's where we started. 3/n
Read 16 tweets
Mar 22, 2021
Ok then :)
(Actually not sure when I’ll have time to set it up -_-)
Ha, Who I was kidding???
Too excited not to build today :D
Ok, it’s fast, but it’s super loud. Annoyingly loud
Read 5 tweets
Mar 7, 2021
Usually I don't interact with trolls and I let slide a lot of things on twitter because policing is not something I like to do (nor I believe it's the proper action). But when your opinion is full of hate, racism, and prejudice against the south of Italy, then I've a problem.
and that's because it's a prejudice which was driven since the "unity" of Italy. And now it's somehow normalised to chant "Vesuvio, wash them with fire" during a football match
Before the unity of italy, we were (very) rich, had the first railway, second naval force for commerce in Europe, first military academy, and so on and so on. After the unity we suddenly become lazy, dirty, unwilling to work and so on....
Read 14 tweets
Mar 6, 2021
It's sad when a person you professionally admire act like this......
Read 4 tweets

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