Scientists in Japan have developed masks that \u201ccan trace coronavirus\u201d after being exposed to ultraviolet light (UV).<\/p>\n
A team of scientists at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan developed the masks using antibodies extracted from ostrich eggs, Kyodo News reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Led by the university president Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, 52, the team believes the masks \u201cwill offer users an easy way to test whether they have contracted the virus.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA coronavirus sample glows on a face mask filter under an ultraviolet light after being sprayed with a fluorescent dye containing antibodies,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
The team developed a special filter that is placed inside the face mask.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe filter can be taken out and sprayed with a fluorescent dye containing the coronavirus antibodies from the ostrich eggs. If the virus is present, the filter will glow when shone under ultraviolet light,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
Experiments were done for 10 days with 32 people infected with the coronavirus. In all cases, the scientists found that \u201call the masks they wore glowed under the UV light, which faded as time went by and their viral load decreased.\u201d<\/p>\n
If all goes well with the ongoing testing, the team hopes to gain approval from Japanese authorities to sell the masks next year.<\/p>\n
Last February, the researchers had injected \u201can inactive and non-threatening form of the coronavirus into female ostriches.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experiment was successful since a huge quantity of antibodies were extracted from the ostriches’ eggs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOstriches are capable of producing several different kinds of antibody, or proteins that neutralize foreign entities in the body,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can mass-produce antibodies from ostriches at a low cost. In the future, I want to make this into an easy testing kit that anyone can use,\u201d Tsukamoto said. (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scientists in Japan have developed masks that \u201ccan trace coronavirus\u201d after being exposed to ultraviolet light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[897],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spotlight"],"pageone_source":{"pageone_source":"","author_name":"PAGEONE Online Network"},"_pageone_source":"","zyndk8_nxtgen_metadata":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/breakfresh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}