Semiconductor chips, widely used to power computers, are now introduced for use by "medical detectives" to find out whether a person has contracted SARS.
The chips, professionally called "protein chips," are the brainchild of researchers of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Health Digit Co. They jointly made the announcement after one month of research.
Head of the project, Hu Gengxi, said as far as he knew, the development was possibly the first of its kind for detecting the virus.
With the protein chips medical detective, doctors will be able to diagnose whether a person is infected within 90 minutes through a blood test.
But there is a prerequisite for the test: patients have to be infected with the disease for a period of roughly 10 days when their body has produced a certain amount of antibodies.
(CRI News June 1, 2003)
