The Oklahoma Institute of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology has begun the use new technology to begin testing how at-risk someone may be to COVID-19.
Medical Director at the Oklahoma Institute of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Dr. Amy Darter, said it’s one of seven labs in the country to begin Phenotyping testing.
Darter said COVID Phenotyping Assay (CPA) evaluates the immune components that are critical to revealing who may be at a higher risk for severe complications from COVID-19 by identifying immune deficiencies.
“We can take your blood and we spin it down. We can take the individual cells and we can stain them and there are about 30 different colors that we stain them with and when we stain them, we can run them through and they stain according to their characteristics, their size, and how much complexity is on the inside,” Darter said.
By doing so, Darter said the technology helps them determine if someone has a primary immune deficiency.
“If you look at the Centers for Disease Control, that’s one of the high-risk factors for having more moderate to severe COVID-19,” Darter said. ” (We) also can look at other secondary things that are a little less hard, less easy to pick up where you have some low lymphocyte counts which again we have seen quite often in patients with age, with obesity, with lots of risk factors and with severe moderate to severe COVID.”
Patients with asthma, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, auto-inflammatory conditions, or anyone over the age of 65 are encouraged to get the testing done.
“We definitely have pediatric patients that would benefit from that immune profile, no question, but if you know it’s definitely the adult who struggled a lot more with this disease,” Darter said.
She said the testing creates an immune profile, also breaking down if a person has any food allergies or if they could be susceptible to any other diseases.
“This is also a flow cytometer that does basal cell activation testing so we do have the assay for that testing which is really super exciting because it’s only been available in a research setting until very recently for food allergies,” Darter said. “It will really change the way we evaluate food allergy patients. It will allow us to challenge them without actually having them have to eat the food. So it’s really going to revolutionize the care of those patients we’re super excited about it.”
Darter said information and data from the CPA testing will allow doctors to begin finding other treatment methods for COVID-19 patients as well.
“This is information. This is power. This is knowledge. You know, vaccination is important for getting a pandemic to go away but for those who don’t want the vaccine or for some reason are nervous about taking the vaccine or who just haven’t been offered the vaccine yet, this is a really valuable set of information,” Darter said.
