Now diseases like Ebola, Zika, and HIV can be easily diagnosed with a new way developed by scientists to rapidly detect a  single virus in Urine.

“The ultimate goal is to build a cheap, easy-to-use device to take into the field and measure the presence of a virus like Ebola in people on the spot. While we are still pretty far from this, this work is a leap in the right direction,” said Jeffrey Dick, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.

This new method is highly sensitive to one type of virus filtering out possible false negatives due to other viruses or other contaminants. There are drawbacks for the two methods that are used to detect the viruses in biological samples where one requires a higher concentration of viruses and other requires samples to be purified to remove contaminants. However, the new method can be used with the urine sample from Humans or animals. On the same family called herpes, the researchers demonstrated their new technique. This virus is known as murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV).

The team places a wire called electrode that conducts electricity where one is thinner than a human cell found in a sample of mouse urine. They add to urine some molecules that are special because they are made of enzymes and antibodies that naturally stick to the virus of interest. All these three stick together and bump into electrode when there is a spike in electric current easily.

For example, the electrode becomes less sensitive as the host of other naturally occurring compounds stick to them over time. This happens when the surface area of the virus will interact with them. This process will also need to be engineered into a compact and also a rugged device to operate in a range of real-world environment.