There is no doubt that viral infections are becoming the scourge of the world in today’s times. The COVID 19 has shaken the world out of its complacence. The world came to a stop and is slowly making a recovery towards normalcy but the fears of more waves of infections overwhelming the population still remain. When it comes to tackling such epidemics, the role of diagnostic testing assumes great importance. Considering that many of the recent epidemics that have shaken the world are supposed to have been of animal origin, it is very vital to have the best of animal health diagnostic antibodies kits functioning accurately at all times.
Indeed, if today the world has been able to get any fix on many of the previous epidemic problems and even on the COVID 19 issue, we have a lot to thank the antigens for animal infectious diseases diagnostic testing kits. Due to vigorous testing, the particular strain of virus could be identified and suitable vaccine development is taking place. Till the vaccine is found, regular testing of humans of their mucosal swabs are helping the doctors identify people with infections. It is a different fact that we are being asked to take social distance precautions and intake of Vit D, C and Zinc to combat the infection by building and strengthening immunity.
Molecular diagnostic kits enable quick detection and they are also not as expensive. Many immunological dependent methods have also been used for finding out the nature of viral infections in human beings. But of all the tests and immunoassays, the lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) has been found to be most effective and with many advantages. To know ore, visit here; https://www.genemedi.net/
Some of the advantages of the lateral flow immunoassay are:
- It is only a one step assay and hence very simple
- It is quick and also low cost
- The need for high volume of sample is not there
- You can get qualitative or semi quantitative outcome
- Since the development time is short, you can bring applications quicker into the market
- The applications can be need based
- Diverse detections of haptens, nucleic acids, proteins and amplicons possible
- Long shelf life and hence no need to refrigerate or bother about cold chain maintenance
- When dealing with fluid samples, there is no need to pretreat them
However, there are also disadvantages such as:
- Danger of not getting precise outcomes due to low sample volume
- There is a need to do an elaborate antibody preparation to get optimum results
- The viscosity of the sample determines the time it takes to do the analysis
Antigens testing is also done using pre-validated sera extracted from both sick as well as healthy animals. Here the ELISA technique is used.
It has to be noted that animal health diagnostic antibodies have to be checked regularly for both pets and farm animals. Failure to do so can make the disease spread quickly and then controlling it would become an issue. The decision to go for a rapid diagnostic test (RDT) or for point of care test (POC) is based on the nature of the pathogens. There are though laid down definitions that talk about the importance of performance time and at the same time the need for simplicity of the test.
Usually, the POC testing is done for clinical syndrome cases. The immunoassayshere are generally of short performance duration and the yield results will influence the final decision.
Usually most animal health diagnostic antibodies are suitable for ELISA sandwich testing along with other immunoassays as per the need of the hour.