That would leave evidence in your immune system at least? I know you can get a test done that shows which vaccines you’ve had, but they only test for diseases that have vaccines, I was wondering in general?
Like ok the test shows you have had influenza type A, B, C, and G. You have had dengue type 3, etc.
Not an expert here, but I suspect that the answer is going to be yes in theory, no in practice.
I think most tests that test for antibodies test for one or two specific ones. How much harder would it be to set up one test that checked for every antibody known to medicine?
Obviously, this technique won’t work for non-infectious conditions, so it wouldn’t tell you if you have had a broken bone, bipolar disorder, or a hernia.
All the major tests for specific antibodies (ELISA, IFA, Western Blot) use other antibodies to detect the antibodies of interest. Antibodies against antibodies if you will. Anti-antibodies?
It would be fully possible to make a soup of the reagent antibodies and test them with a patients serum. But the result would always be positive…
Bodies?
Giving it more thought, such a test would be possible. Something much like a rapid drug test, where designer antibodies are placed in discrete stripes on absorbant paper. Paper gets flooded with serum, and stripes that bind an antibody of interest change color. Or an automated test that involves a flow cytometer.
Would be expesive though. And of limited clinical value.
This is science man! The rules of grammar have no power here.
Edit: probably there is a word for ‘anti antibody’. But I know it not.
An autopsy might be a pretty good test.
Yes and no. A “generic” anti-human-IgG (or IgM) antibody is used to detect bound antibodies of interest. They are first immobilized, however, by their capacity to bind a relevant (usually protein) antigen.
If grude is willing to part with a larger amount of serum, you could run a lot of specific tests in parallel.
“Presence of antibodies” does not equal “diseases you’ve had”. Rather, it equals “diseases you’ve been exposed to”. Right?
It equals diseases that have been in your bloodstream, so yes, it will include anything you’ve been vaccinated against.
And anything that you’ve been exposed to from the environment, but didn’t “catch”. So if your body encountered a flu virus that it successfully defeated before it could cause flu, you would test positive for it even though you never “got” that flu per se.
Exactly. You may have been exposed to a pathogen, but the infection may have been so mild that you did not notice, although you did produce antibodies. Or you have been vaccinated and therefore have produced antibodies against diseases you never had.
My immune system has produced antibodies to fight off hundreds, maybe thousands, of pathogens. It would do no good to scan for all of them and then try to sort out which ones have any relevance to any potential ly symptomatic diseases. Having a list of thousands of pathogens, among millions in the global population at large, would not move our knowledge in the direction of anything useful.
More to the point, the list would be vague, vague about the level of sickness to start with, and would be hit and miss toward entire families of pathogens ,and sections of them.
“yes already have antibodies against E COLI but you can still get sick from E COLI !”
The presence of antibodies won’t say how sick you were due to that pathogen…
What’s the broadest test or battery of tests that is now commercially available and reasonable in cost? For example, if I have an extra $500 sitting around that I’m just itching to throw away, how many viruses can I get tested for exposure for until I run out of money?
If you pay out of your own pocket? God only knows. Medical billing is some mystical art. None of the big labs (Quest, Mayo, ARUP) are kind enough to give any indication of cost. They have contracts with the government, and insurance companies, but just make up the prices for individuals.
ARUP offers something like 250 different infectious serology tests. For $500, you might get 10. But, if you go through an insurance company and get their discount, maybe 25.