© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
You don’t have to wait 48 hours for your urine culture report to know if you have a urinary tract infection (UTI). An innovative diagnostic test can accurately identify it in 15 minutes, bringing laboratory testing into your doctor’s office. Not only that, it can tell you which antibiotic will work on your condition so that you don’t have to rely on broad spectrum antibiotics that could build antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
This high-tech, rapid point-of-care test for UTIs — PA-100 AST System — has been developed by the Sweden-based Sysmex Astrego. It has just won the prestigious £8million (Rs 85 crore) Longitude Prize on AMR, which celebrates innovations, at an event in London’s Science Museum. It is being seen as a breakthrough because UTI therapies trigger AMR the most.
What does the testing device do?
Using a tiny (400 microlitre/less than half a millilitre) sample of urine on a smartphone-sized cartridge, the test can identify the bacterial infection in just 15 minutes and accurately identify the antibiotic to treat it within 45 minutes. It has an accuracy of 90 per cent compared to the 60 per cent efficacy of the urine dipstick method.
How does it work?
Less than half a millilitre of the urine is added to the cartridge which contains a chip. Bacteria in the urine are trapped in over 10,000 microfluidic traps in parallel arrays and exposed to five different antibiotics at five different concentrations. The sample is inserted into an analyser unit (a reading instrument about the size of a shoebox). Here the bacterial growth is monitored through imaging. Within 30 to 45 minutes, the device declares which bacteria is “sensitive” or “resistant” to each antibiotic.
“It is the first time a point-of-care test is capable of identifying the bacteria and its susceptibility to specific drugs by observing how the patient’s infection responds in real-time to different antibiotics (a phenotypic test). Rapid and rational use of antibiotics — choosing the appropriate antibiotic for the correct patient at the optimal time — can save lives, combat the superbug crisis and prevent AMR,” says Dr Abdul Ghafur, jury member and consultant, infectious diseases, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai.
Why is it better than current UTI dipstick tests?
The current urine dipstick test doesn’t help the doctor choose the right antibiotic. Since the culture results take a minimum of two to three days, the doctor cannot wait that long and has to start an antibiotic empirically, based on their educated guesswork. By the time results are out, the patient has already completed a full or half course of antibiotics that may not be specific to his condition.
Blind antibiotic prescriptions are a major reason for the antibiotic resistance crisis, especially in countries like India. “In about 20-30 per cent of sepsis patients, the infection originates from the urinary tract. Up to two in five people who develop severe sepsis will lose their lives. Hence, rapid and accurate point-of-care tests can save millions of lives worldwide, especially in India,” Dr Ghafur says. According to him, there’s a possibility of previously ‘retired’ first-line antibiotics coming back into use for a majority of patients.
