A new rapid diagnostic assay can help assess whether infectious pathogens are present in the body, even at early stages of infection before the development of sepsis.
A Wyss Institute team reports in eBioMedicine that it has developed a rapid and specific diagnostic assay that could help physicians decide within an hour whether a patient has a systemic infection and should be hospitalized for aggressive intervention therapy.
The potential of this assay to detect pathogen materials was demonstrated in both animal studies and a prospective human clinical study, whose results also suggest that it also could serve as a companion diagnostic to monitor the success of antibiotic and dialysis-like sepsis therapies.
“Our pathogen detection technology solves both dilemmas: it quickly reports whether infectious pathogens are present in the body, even at early stages of infection before sepsis develops. And it can more specifically identify patients who have excessive inflammation due to systemic infection, rather than other causes,” said Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, the Wyss Institute’s founding director.
“This assay could become a real game changer in this clinical area, and it also should lead to more judicious use of antibiotics, helping to decrease the worrisome rise we are seeing in antibiotic-resistant organisms.”
