Private Harley Street Clinic becomes first in UK to offer T-cell covid-19 testing
London-based Private Harley Street Clinic has become the first UK clinic to offer T lymphocyte (T-cell) covid-19 testing.
The test determines previously undetected T lymphocyte immune responses to covid-19, providing a clear answer for people who believe that they have had the virus but don’t have any proof.
The test – administered via a venous blood draw – can be helpful for people suffering with long, complex cases of covid-19 and multiple symptoms, indicating the presence of “long covid”, which scientists believe could be a separate or second epidemic. T-cell testing could also help find and influence better treatments for the virus; in the US, T-cell DNA is extracted and sequenced with Microsoft’s artificial intelligence to map out the immune system’s “black box” data into navigable science.
The CE-marked test costs £195 at Private Harley Street Clinic. Dr Mark Ali, medical director of Private Harley Street Clinic, said: “Identification of a T-cell response to covid-19 is seen as the missing link in testing. We have tracked so many people who are sure that they have had covid-19 but test negative for antibodies and the antigen itself, perhaps because they were tested too late to pick up the virus or it was a false negative.”
“Because of the pandemic’s length and changing mutations people are quite rightly concerned about their covid-19 immunity status. It is helpful, but also empowering for people to know if they have had covid-19 and also generated an immune response. In time, T lymphocyte testing may also provide us with a more realistic picture of how many people have had the virus, and how our bodies successfully fight and kill it,” he said.
