Colour-coded blood test that turns blue if you have HIV is 10 times more sensitive than current methods

A test for HIV that is 10 times more sensitive and a fraction of the cost of current methods, has been developed by British scientists. It uses nanotechnology to give a result that can be seen with the naked eye by turning a sample red or blue. Developed by scientists at Imperial College in London, the technique offers the promise of better diagnosis and treatment in the developing world. Research leader Molly Stevens, said: ‘Our approach affords for improved sensitivity, does not require sophisticated instrumentation and it is ten times cheaper.’ Simple and quick HIV tests that analyze saliva already exist but they can only pick up the virus when it reaches relatively high concentrations in the body. ‘We would be able to detect infection even in those cases where previous methods, such as the saliva test, were rendering a ‘false negative’ because the viral load was too low to be detected,’ Stevens said, after...