ArcDia Ltd (http://www.arcdia.com). ArcDia International Ltd today announced that the first antigen test for human bocavirus type 1 is now commercially available on ArcDia's mariPOC® test platform.
Bocavirus is a DNA virus found in 2005. The virus has ever since been a target of intensive clinical research. The results indicate that bocavirus is a common cause of acute respiratory tract infections particularly among children. Practically all people have suffered from bocavirus infection by the age of six. So far, bocavirus has been detected mainly by gene amplification methods, which are sensitive but result in high number of clinically insignificant positive findings. However, bocavirus has not been extensively diagnosed in clinical practice due to lack of accurate and rapid methods.
mariPOC® is known as a highly specific antigen detection method for acute respiratory infections. High specificity is required to pick up clinically relevant true positive bocavirus infection cases. ArcDia offers the bocavirus test as a part of mariPOC® respi multianalyte test, which hereby detects 10 clinically relevant viruses and bacteria from a single swab sample. The bocavirus antigen test is so far available only for research use.