Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay along with Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases have conducted a study on the use of mass spectrometry to determine the intensity of Covid-19 infection. This will help in understanding the severity of the infection in positive patients, which in turn can help in providing effective healthcare. The study funded by the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research and IIT-B has been published in iScience, an open-access journal from Cell Press.

The researchers have found that the quantities of specific proteins in the nasopharyngeal samples of a person can differentiate between less and more severity of the infection. Professor Sanjeeva Srivastava, who led the IIT-B team, explained, “Mass spectrometry is a tool that can detect whether a particular protein is present in a sample and in what percentage. The commonly done RT-PCR test uses a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction to detect the virus’s nucleic acid. But specific viral or host proteins, released at different stages of the infection, have stories to tell. By identifying which protein is released at which stage, we can determine the severity of the disease.”