Tell me more about BioSure...
BioSure was founded with an utter belief that self-testing and self-diagnosis would be the future of healthcare.
Globally there has always been a clinical bottle neck - there is insufficuent healthcare capacity for the number of people. Self-testing started with home pregnancy testing almost 40 years ago and the COVID-19 pandemic has now massively accelerated the acceptability of taking control of your own testing.
We have always been passionate about our customers - providing you with the right tools and advice, to allow you to take responsibility and be in control. We are now thrilled to be expanding our list of partners and companies we collaborate with, to give you even more choice.
What is an antibody?
Antibodies are specialised proteins that your immune system produces in response to a foreign substance.
They work like a lock and key and in the case of the coronavirus, the neutralising antibodies block the spike on the outside of the virus to prevent it being able to enter and infect your cells.
It takes your body a little while to make these, so we recommend you do not test until at least 14 days after your infection or second vaccination.
SARS-CoV-2 Infectivity and variants
Since the reporting of several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, China to the World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2019, the novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2 which causes the infection now known as COVID-19, has infected hundreds of millions of people, causing a global pandemic.
COVID-19 is primarily spread via respiratory droplets, when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Most infected people experience some flu-like symptoms such as fever, coughing, loss of taste or smell, muscle pains and fatigue. The new Delta variant also includes a runny nose and sneezing, especially in those fully vaccinated.
More than 5 billion doses of vaccine have been administered, but the rapid development of new strains of the virus mean we are are continually developing our understanding of how symptoms and transmission are changing. We do know that those who have been vaccinated do experience less severe and sometimes different symptoms.
Knowing anything that is going on in your own body is important as it helps you to make informed choices that are right for you.
No vaccine is 100% effective. AstraZeneca state their own vaccine demonstrates a 70.4% efficacy at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 after a second dose and the UK government state an effectiveness of around 85-90% after the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
It is now known that antibody levels decline over time, with them declining rapidly by about 6 months.
Knowing whether or not you currently have neutralising antibodies can help you make decisions with confidence, be that socialising, travelling, going back to work or seeing loved ones.
Vaccines
We've explained above what an antibody is. The first time you get infected it takes a while for your body to recognise the infection and produce the antibodies needed to fight it. Once you have had an infection, your body remembers what it learned the first time that it had to protect your body.
The vaccines that are currently approved in the UK are called mRNA vaccines and they contain a small piece of the SARS-CoV-2 stimulates your body to think it has been infected and produce neutralising antibodies. Then when your body is exposed to it again, it knows what it has to do.
The reason you might have a fever or feel a bit unwell after a vaccine is because your body is starting to build the antibodies by having an immune response.
Mutations
Your body produces different types of antibodies that perform different jobs. The protective IgG antibodies our test detects are the ones that target the spike protein (this is how the virus gets into your cells and infects them)
Although there are many mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus happening globally, similarly as happens with flu every year, fundamentally the spike cannot mutate into something else or the virus would no longer be SARS-CoV-2, it would be a different virus. Our BioSURE self-test detects IgG antibodies to the full trimeric spike protein. These are your protective antibodies.
The BioSURE COVID-19 IgG Antibody Self Test has been evaluated to make sure it detects the antibodies from each of the main variants identified so far and we will continue this validation as new strains are identified.
