The Instituto de Investigaciones de la Altura (IIA) was born 60 years ago with the creation of the Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH).It is oriented to the investigation of the adaptation and acclimatization to the altitude, and without pretending it to the solution of the national problems in health. The eradication of endemic goiter, the consolidation of the Tuberculosis Pilot Program and its expansion to a community model, the proposition that anemia in Peru is due to overdiagnosis by using an inadequate correction formula for height and a flat cut-off point for the children, knowing the beneficial effect of native plants such as maca, treatment for COVID-19 with second-indication drugs, damage to health from the use of traditional biomass stoves are some of the problems whose solutions have been born from his investigations, in addition to those found by his investigations on the pro...

La rápida propagación mundial de un nuevo coronavirus denominado SARS-CoV-2, detectado en la cuidad de Wuhan, China, hace necesario del conocimiento e implementación de métodos de diagnóstico confiables para detectar y tratar adecuadamente a los pacientes. Para ello, los métodos más utilizados para el diagnóstico son: la técnica de inmunocromatografía (IC), la cual enmarca tanto a las pruebas detectoras de anticuerpos como a la prueba de detección de antígenos; y las pruebas de diagnóstico molecular basadas en tecnología de PCR, detectando cuantitativa y cualitativamente al virus, como por ejemplo qRT-PCR y al LAMP. Mediante la revisión de las bases de Scielo, Pubmed y Scopus se compara la utilidad diagnóstica de las pruebas LAMP, qRT-PCR e IC aplicadas al diagnóstico de SARS-CoV-2, y cómo las distintas variantes del virus han impactado sobre la confiabilidad de estas p...

The rapid global spread of a new coronavirus initially named 2019-nCoV, detected in the city of Wuhan, China, now known as SARS-CoV-2, has posed new challenges for epidemiological surveillance. At the same time, the alarming growth of the pandemic makes it necessary to know and implement reliable diagnostic methods to detect and adequately treat patients. To this end, the most commonly used methods for diagnosis are: the immunochromatographic (IC) technique, which includes both antibody detection tests and antigen detection tests; and molecular diagnostic tests based on PCR technology, detecting virus quantitatively and qualitatively, such as qRT-PCR and LAMP, respectively. In the present review, we compare the diagnostic utility of LAMP, PCR and IC tests applied to the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, and how the different virus variants has impacted on its reliability. The necessary informatio...