Then analyzed the suspected Ebola sample in Solna – New Technology

Blood sample from a man with suspected Ebola analyzed at P4 Laboratory, Public Health Agency safety lab in Solna. In the best cases, the investigation may take four hours.

     Here is preparing a anstäld to work in a so-called säkerhetsbänk.Foto: Karl-Erik Sundqvist

     Karin Tegmark WisellFoto: Lena Katarina Johansson

A suspected case of Ebola investigated in Stockholm, after a man who recently lived in a country affected by Ebola fever onset. While the man is treated at the Communicable Disease Unit at the Karolinska hospital, so his blood sample analyzed at the Public Health Agency P4 lab in Solna. Here is Scandinavia’s only safety laboratory in level 4 (P4).

Karin Tegmark Wisell, who is chair of the Department of Microbiology, can not comment on individual samples because of patient confidentiality. But she describes the techniques used to make an analysis of Ebola in the hermetically sealed lab.

The quickest test is a molecular biological analysis where examine if there is RNA from the Ebola virus in the sample. A first enzyme converts RNA to DNA, and then are called a PCR assay, a common method of amplifying DNA for analysis.

– In the best case, we have the answer within four hours if it is high and good quality of the sample. But usually it takes a little longer, maybe four to six hours, says Karin Tegmark Wisell.

Later examined frequently if the subject has formed antibodies to the virus. Lab staff can also cultivate the virus and study it in the electron microscope.

Security is rigorous. Skilled personnel from entering the lab through a special dressing room via an airlock. There, they dress themselves in a comprehensive, tailor-made “space suit” with welded rubber boots and gloves.

The suit inflated with compressed air to a certain overpressure that keeps microorganisms out. Compressed air is also breathable air, and the transparent hood is on the back of a solenoid valve where the air is escaping.

Karin Tegmark Wisell says that the lab usually do several analyzes of suspected viral haemorrhagic fevers, like Ebola, every year.

– Sometimes drops it into an issue month, sometimes it is more sparse. Often it is about a person who worked in a country where a large number of cases reported and that may have been exposed to the disease, she says.