The new procedure shortens wait times from three days and could help reduce the spread of superbug bacteria.
The discovery of antibiotics in the early part of the 20th century changed modern medicine. Simple infections that previously killed people became easy to treat. Antibiotics’ ability to stave off infections made possible routine surgeries, organ transplants, and chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer.
But because of overuse and misuse, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. Many species of bacteria have evolved resistance to commonly used antibiotics and multidrug-resistant bacteria—so-called superbugs—have emerged, plaguing hospitals and nursing homes. Last month, the World Health Organization issued a dire warning: The world is running out of antibiotics.
A new test developed at Caltech that identifies antibiotic-resistant bacteria in as little as 30 minutes could help turn the tide by allowing medical professionals to better choose which antibiotics to treat an infection with. A paper describing the method appears in the October 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
When doctors treat patients with bacterial infections, they often skip over first-line antibiotics like methicillin or amoxicillin—drugs that bacteria are more likely to be resistant to—and go straight for stronger second-line antibiotics, like ciprofloxacin. This practice increases the chance that the treatment will be effective, but it is not ideal. That’s because the increased use of second-line antibiotics makes it more likely that bacteria also will become resistant to these stronger drugs.
“Right now, we’re overprescribing, so we’re seeing resistance much sooner than we have to for a lot of the antibiotics that we would otherwise want to preserve for more serious situations,” says Nathan Schoepp, a Caltech graduate student and co-author of the study.
The problem is that there has not been a quick and easy way for a doctor to know if their patient’s infection is resistant to particular antibiotics. To find out, the doctor would have to send a sample to a testing lab, and wait two to three days for an answer.
“Therapies are driven by guidelines developed by organizations like the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention without knowing what the patient actually has, because the tests are so slow,” says Rustem Ismagilov, Caltech’s Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and director of the Jacobs Institute for Molecular Engineering for Medicine. “We can change the world with a rapid test like this. We can change the way antibiotics are prescribed.”
Ismagilov, Schoepp, Caltech graduate student Travis Schlappi, who is also a co-author, and their fellow researchers aimed to develop a test that could be completed during a single visit to the doctor’s office. They focused on one of the most common types of infections in humans, urinary tract infections (UTIs), which 50 percent of women contract during their lifetimes. UTIs result in eight million doctor visits and one million ER visits each year in the United States alone.
The researchers’ new test works like this: A sample of urine (which may contain bacteria) collected from a patient with a UTI is divided into two parts. One part is exposed to an antibiotic for 15 minutes, while the other part incubates without antibiotics. The bacteria from each sample then are broken open (lysed) to release their cellular contents, which are run through a process that combines a detection chemistry technique called digital real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification, or dLAMP, with a device called a SlipChip (SlipChips are a previous invention of Ismagilov and his Caltech colleagues). This combination replicates specific DNA markers so they can be imaged and individually counted as discrete fluorescent spots appearing on the chip.
The test operates on the principle that typical bacteria will replicate their DNA (in preparation for cellular division) less well in an antibiotic solution, resulting in the presence of fewer DNA markers. However, if the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic, their DNA replication will not be hampered and the test will reveal similar numbers of DNA markers in both the treated and untreated solutions.
When used on 54 samples of urine from patients with UTIs caused by the bacteria Escherischia coli, the test results had a 95 percent match with those obtained using the standard two-day test, which is considered the gold standard for accuracy.
Ismagilov and Schoepp plan to begin running the test on other types of infectious bacteria to see how well it performs. They also hope to tweak the testing procedures to work with blood samples. Blood infections are more difficult to test because the bacteria are present in much lower numbers than they are in urine, but such a test could help reduce mortality from blood-borne infections, which can turn fatal if not treated quickly.
Learn more: Caltech Researchers Create Test That Reveals Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in 30 Minutes
The Latest on: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Antibiotic-resistant bacteria” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]- After Seven Years, WHO Updates Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Liston May 17, 2024 at 10:18 am
After a gap of seven years, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday released its updated list of antibiotic-resistant bac ...
- WHO updates list of drug-resistant bacteria threatening human healthon May 17, 2024 at 7:30 am
Dr Yukiko Nakatani, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Antimicrobial Resistance ad interim said that by mapping the global burden of drug-resistant bacteria and assessing their impact on public ...
- American Farms Have a Drug Problemon May 17, 2024 at 3:00 am
The growing risk from drug-resistant bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites, England’s former chief medical officer Sally Davies told The Guardian in an interview published this week, is “more acute” ...
- Mystery CRISPR unlocked: A new ally against antibiotic resistance?on May 16, 2024 at 11:54 am
CRISPR-Cas systems have revolutionized biotechnology by offering ways to edit genes like a pair of programmable scissors. In nature, bacteria use these systems to fight off deadly viruses. A recent ...
- A second chance for a new antibiotic agenton May 16, 2024 at 8:37 am
An increasing number of bacteria have become resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. Researchers from Bochum have discovered a fresh opportunity for a potential active molecule whose predecessor ...
- Woman's stress as UTI becomes resistant to antibioticson May 16, 2024 at 12:30 am
A woman who needs antibiotics almost every other month has said her infection's growing resistance to them has caused "stress and suffering". Sian Jones, from Vale of Glamorgan, has spoken about her ...
- Your beach is home to sand, surf and deadly germs — beware of these bacteriaon May 15, 2024 at 9:56 am
If you want your health to be in ship shape this summer — you might want to be aware of the dangerous germs you could be exposed to at the beach.
- Antibiotic resistance in weaned calves a rarityon May 15, 2024 at 8:15 am
Bovine respiratory disease is one of the most important causes of sickness and death loss in beef cattle, both in cow-calf herds and in feedlots.” ...
- New bacteria discovery could tackle antibiotic resistanceon May 14, 2024 at 6:23 am
A Queen’s University Belfast study suggests bacteria with antibiotic resistance are able to pump the medication out of their cells.
- Changes in pig farming in the 20th century spread antibiotic-resistant Salmonella around the world, finds studyon May 9, 2024 at 7:44 am
Historical changes in pig farming led to the global spread of Salmonella, resistant to antibiotics—a new international study led by researchers at the University of Warwick suggests.
via Google News and Bing News