Is it a new kind of treatment?
In: Biology
No it is looking for antibodies which are part of the human body’s defence against viruses, the bumps on the virus can have antibodies attached to them which stop them from entering cells and make them easier to attack and destroy, the problem is that many of these antibodies are very similar an they resemble antibodies for fighting the common cold so the test need to check for antibodies which specifically relate to COVID 19.
A treatment is something done to a patient to help them get better. Antibody tests are something done with a patient’s blood to see what is in their blood, it doesn’t directly affect them, so it is called a test, not a treatment.
Antibodies are proteins created by your immune system that will stick to certain foreign molecules, tagging them so that your immune system can kill them better. When you recover from a disease, this is often because your immune system made an antibody to the germs causing the disease, allowing it to more effectively kill them off.
There are some different methods of antibody testing, but one is similar to pregnancy tests. You have some molecules from the germ as well as some dyes, and you put some of the patient’s blood plasma on it to see if the patient’s blood contains antibodies that will bind to the germ molecules, which will cause a coloured line to appear.
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