Imagine the ability to quickly and accurately diagnose if you are infected with influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or COVID-19 with one breath in less than a minute. A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis is developing an inexpensive, handheld breathalyzer that could make rapid screening a step closer to reality.
Rajan Chakrabarty, PhD, the Harold D. Jolley Career Development Associate Professor of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and John Cirrito, PhD, professor of neurology at the School of Medicine, will adapt their COVID-19-detecting breathalyzer to one that can also screen for influenza A and RSV with a two-year $3.6 million grant from Flu Lab, an organization that funds efforts to defeat influenza. With the funding, they plan to take the technology from bench into clinical trials at Washington University’s Infectious Disease Clinical Research Unit with the goals of design and specifications for commercial application and preparing the breath test for FDA registration.
COVID-19, RSV and influenza A are the most predominant of seasonal viruses, each transmitted through aerosols and droplets that are easily spread indoors. Influenza A infects up to 40 million people in the U.S. annually, and RSV can hospitalize 240,000 children and older adults. While preferable to diagnose viruses early, the viral load is often low in the early stages of the disease, requiring a rapid and sensitive test. An accurate diagnostic device that provides fast sampling and test results and could identify multiple viruses even at early stages would reduce time to treatment and lead to earlier decisions by individuals to isolate, more efficiently protecting households, communities and businesses.