Imagine a sensor attached to your telephone, that instantly diagnoses viral agents and transmits that to a central community database. That’s the potential of an ongoing Pentagon-funded research project, spearheaded by geneticists at Duke University. Since 2006, they’ve been hunting for a genetic signature that can accurately assess, well before symptoms appear, whether someone’s been infected with a virus. Eight months into a $19.5 million grant from Darpa, the Pentagon’s out-there research agency, the expert behind the program is anticipating a tool with implications far beyond military circles.

What’s realy exciting is tha the benefits of this Darpa initiative goes beyond that. Not only have the researchers found a specific genetic signature that indicates viral infection, but the team has concluded that viruses and bacterial infections trigger different genes. Which means physicians could one day know whether to prescribe antibiotics, which can treat bacteria but not viruses. The drugs are so overused and wrongly prescribed, experts at a recent congressional hearing warned that Americans face “a post antibiotic era.”

The privacy and regulatory aspects will be a barrier to make these devices available for use, but one day they will be!

Source: Katie Drummond, May 13, 2010 Wired Magazine