DiagnosisI think the ELISA and RT-PCR test results are available in about 3 hours. Maybe some medical FReepers can help.It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis. Confirmation that symptoms are caused by Ebola virus infection are made using the following investigations:
- antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
- antigen-capture detection tests
- serum neutralization test
- reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay
- electron microscopy
- virus isolation by cell culture.
Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; laboratory testing on non-inactivated samples should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/
I read up on it and found that ELISA tests aren’t very reliable. The PCR tests are the way to go, but they take a few hours to do. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the research field, but this has made me interested in going back.
Here’s where i found some layman information about it.
http://www.newsweek.com/how-hospitals-test-ebola-274898