r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	Dunk546
Comment	They work by detecting viral load - so basically a stronger line for more viral load. Viral load is generally (admittedly not exactly) congruent with symptoms - zero symptoms usually means very low viral load, whereas once the virus replicates to the stage where it can be detected, viral load is obviously high and therefore lateral flows are more reliable. Here's a paper which backs me up, though admittedly the science is catching up with the reality just because it's still all very new. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n823 Edit, just to say that I accept that my previous comment wasn't quite right - they are effective if you are not yet symptomatic, but significantly less so than if you are symptomatic.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/rllzmp/cold_syntoms_took_lateral_flow_negative/hpgwjsh/
Created	Tue 21st Dec 2021 8:36pm
Status	normal ()

They work by detecting viral load - so basically a stronger line for more viral load. Viral load is generally (admittedly not exactly) congruent with symptoms - zero symptoms usually means very low viral load, whereas once the virus replicates to the stage where it can be detected, viral load is obviously high and therefore lateral flows are more reliable.

Here's a paper which backs me up, though admittedly the science is catching up with the reality just because it's still all very new.

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n823

Edit, just to say that I accept that my previous comment wasn't quite right - they are effective if you are not *yet* symptomatic, but significantly less so than if you are symptomatic.