The virus has not yet been named, but it has been identified as a coronavirus, which is the same class of virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Like SARS, the new virus causes a severe case of pneumonia. While the virus is related to the coronaviruses found in bats, scientists don’t believe the virus is making the jump from bats to people directly. Also, unlike SARS, they don’t believe that it can be transmitted from person-to-person through the air, instead needing more direct contact.

Studies are currently being conducted involving mice, ferrets and rhesus macaques, all of which are commonly used as stand-ins for people when it comes to infectious disease studies. The results have been limited at best, as while the virus infected the monkeys’ lungs, it didn’t appear to damage other body tissues.

I’ll be the first to say that I am adamantly against fearmongering. Yes, it is sad that seven people have died from this unknown virus, but that’s still a relatively small number and we shouldn’t be so quick as to call this the next SARS-like epidemic. At the same time, catching it early and better understanding the virus is clearly in our best interest. Further study is naturally warranted.

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The diagnosis of most particular types of disease is a time-consuming process. But that’s going to change in the future thanks to a new breathalyzer-like technology that is currently under development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The researchers there believe that the tech could be used to diagnose a wide range of diseases including cancer and diabetes.

The human body reacts differently to different conditions. It is capable of shifting between energy sources when required.

According to Warren Porter, a UW-Madison professor of zoology, “When we’re healthy we use the food that we eat. When we get sick, the immune system takes over the body and starts tearing apart proteins to make antibodies and use them as an energy source“.

This shift between energy sources leads to different biochemical pathways. As a result, there will be changes in the carbon isotopes in the exhaled CO2. The “breathalyzer” will be used to detect these changes in isotopic signatures of carbon-containing metabolic by-products.

One of the main advantages of such a system will be the early detection of diseases. Diseases could be diagnosed well before symptoms start to show up. As you already know, early detection is very important when it comes to diseases such as cancer. And the use of a single technique to survey the entire body will also simplify diagnosis to a great extent.

The research on the technique was done on mice which were injected with glucose containing a single atom of carbon-13. This was done to detect the most active metabolic pathways in sick and healthy mice. They found out that there were changes in the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 in the exhaled CO2 by the healthy and sick mice. Furthermore, different ratios were detected for different diseases.

At the moment, the “breathalyzer” is about the size of a shoebox, but they are planning to make it smaller. Head here to know more about the study.

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