People could learn within 15 minutes whether they are infected with hepatitis C, thanks to a rapid test developed by Northwestern University.

The test will allow doctors to diagnose infections during an office visit and kickstart patients’ treatment before they leave, researchers said.

“This test could revolutionize HCV care in the U.S. and globally by dramatically improving diagnosis, accelerating treatment uptake and enabling more people to be cured faster,” researcher Dr. Claudia Hawkins said in a news release. She’s director of Northwestern’s Institute for Global Health’s Center for Global Communicable and Emerging Infectious Diseases in Chicago.

“By reducing delays and simplifying testing pathways, it has the potential to save millions of lives from the devastating liver-related complications of untreated HCV,” Hawkins added.

The test works up to 75% faster than the currently available rapid test for hepatitis C virus, researchers said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Xpert HCV test in June 2024, which returns results in 40 to 60 minutes.

Collaborators at Johns Hopkins University independently evaluated the new test’s accuracy using 97 blood samples, researchers said. Results showed the test agreed 100% with results from lab-based testing. 

Hepatitis C infections affect an estimated 50 million people worldwide and cause 242,000 deaths annually, largely due to liver scarring and liver cancer. 

These infections are curable with an eight- to 12-week course of medication, but treatment rates remain low, researchers said in background notes.

Typically, doctors had to send off blood samples to a lab to test whether a person has an active Hepatitis C infection. It can take days or weeks before the lab returns those results, researchers said.

The test runs blood samples through a device called the DASH (Diagnostic Analyzer for Specific Hybridization). The DASH device was initially developed to detect COVID from samples collected with nasal swabs.

“We were able to develop a diagnostic test that can be performed at the point of care during a patient’s clinical visit, which could enable same-day diagnosis and treatment in support of HCV elimination efforts,” senior researcher Sally McFall said in a news release. McFall is co-director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health Technologies (CIGHT) at Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering in Evanston, Ill.

The new test could play a critical role in the World Health Organization’s ambitious goal to eliminate hepatitis C virus by 2030.

A report on the new test was published Dec. 10 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.