A new test can accurately diagnose Ebola virus disease within minutes, providing clinicians with crucial information for treating patients and containing outbreaks.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health and Boston Children's Hospital have shown that a new commercially developed rapid diagnostic test performed at bedside was as sensitive as the conventional laboratory-based method used for clinical testing during the recent outbreak in Sierra Leone. The results are published in The Lancet.

While the West African Ebola epidemic has slowed since its peak last fall, the crisis simmers on; there were still 24 confirmed cases of Ebola reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone in the week ending June 14.

To fight Ebola, the first step is to determine which patients are sick with the disease and which with other illnesses with a similar presentation. To use the currently recommended molecular approach, laboratories must be built and samples of highly infectious blood must be drawn, often with unsafe needles and syringes, and then shipped over potentially great distances at substantial risk to the health care workers involved in the process. Then, clinicians and patients must wait for results--sometimes for several days.

These obstacles and delays prevent timely diagnosis and treatment, and also result in individuals without Ebola being admitted to holding units where they may become infected with the virus, the researchers said.

"Simplifying the process and speeding up diagnosis could have a major impact," said Nira Pollock, senior author of the paper and HMS assistant professor of medicine and associate medical director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital.

As the Ebola outbreak in West Africa began to surge in 2014, Pollock and Partners In Health researcher Jana Broadhurst worked with the research core of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine to reach out to teams around the world who were developing diagnostic tools that would enable clinicians to diagnose Ebola patients quickly.