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A team of UCLA researchers has developed an automated diagnostic test reader for antimicrobial resistance using a smartphone. The technology could lead to routine testing for antimicrobial susceptibility in areas with limited resources.
Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are posing a severe threat to global public health. In particular, they are becoming more common in bacterial pathogens responsible for high-mortality diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea and sepsis.
Part of the challenge in combatting the spread of these organisms has been the limited ability to conduct antimicrobial susceptibility testing in regions that do not have access to labs, testing equipment and trained diagnostic technicians to read such tests. The UCLA researchers have developed a simple and inexpensive smartphone attachment that can conduct automated antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The research results were published in the journal Scientific Reports, part of the Nature Publishing Group.
"This work is extremely important and timely, given that drug-resistant bacteria are increasingly becoming a global threat rendering many of our first-line antibiotics ineffective," said Aydogan Ozcan, Chancellor's Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Our new smartphone-based technology can help put laboratory-quality testing into much wider adoption, especially in resource-limited regions."
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The UCLA device connects to a smartphone and has a plate that can hold up to 96 wells for testing. An array of LEDs illuminates the sample and then the phone's camera is used to sense small changes in light transmission of each well containing a different dose selected from a panel of antibiotics. Images are sent to a server to automatically perform antimicrobial susceptibility testing and the results are returned to the smartphone in about one minute.
The researchers then tested the device in clinical settings at UCLA. They used special plates prepared with 17 different antibiotics targeting Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacteria containing highly resistant antimicrobial profiles. During the clinical tests, they used 78 samples from patients. Their results showed that the mobile-phone-based reader meets the FDA-defined criteria for laboratory testing, with a detection accuracy of 98.2 percent.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday December 21 2016, @01:39AM
the medicine I used to take - Depakote - made me itch like a motherfucker. I'd create scabs by scratching so much. Eventually these became infected.
I thought I had skin cancer all over both my legs, as a sore that never seems to heal is often skin cancer. The sores were incredibly painful. I showed a nurse at my mental health clinic; she totaly freaked than drove me to a 24-hour urgent care clinic.
"You have a staph infection" said the doctor.
I'm a dead man, I thought.
But no he prescribed antibiotic pills and ointment, and the sores cleared right up. I was fortunate; the resistant stuff would have resisted the medicine.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @02:23AM
Most people have a varient of staph on their skin. It is usually kept in check by the skin system. Good that you caught it early and dealt with it. These things can be nasty. Good luck, and I hope you have fully recovered.