Rapid Electrodynamic Sepsis Diagnostics

Kurzbezeichnung

RapSepsis

Einrichtung Vetmeduni

Zentrum für Pathobiologie

Art der Forschung

Angewandte Forschung

Forschungsschwerpunkt

Translationale Medizin und vergleichende Medizin

Abstract

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the host’s body response to an infection injures its own tissues. When self- or foreign bacteria enter the bloodstream and start growing such an imbalanced systemic response can rapidly lead to multiple organ failure and death. The successful treatment of septic infections critically depends on the time of diagnosis that in turn is contingent upon a microbiological analysis of the patient’s blood sample. If the time from the blood collection to medical diagnosis is short, healthcare professionals are empowered to rapidly intervene in a targeted manner and administer appropriate antibiotics.The key problem preventing a rapid and correct sepsis diagnosis is the delay in confirmation that a viable pathogen(s) is present and the precision of microbiological analysis. These problems are largely due to the complexity of a blood sample, which contains a high proportion of human material compared to the relatively low overall content of a pathogen(s) to be detected. Our project aims to develop a novel method that isolates live bacteria from a whole blood sample, enabling a gentle, non-damaging separation of relevant bacterial pathogens from other blood components using our custom bio-electrodynamic filters. Our technological workflow is able to prepare the whole blood sample highly selectively for further analysis in a very short time; it generates a concentrated solution that contains the isolated pathogen(s) responsible for the ongoing/developing sepsis. Once concentrated without jeopardizing their viability/growth, these pathogenic microorganisms can be then detected by a pallet of metabolically-activated chemicals. This new 2-step workflow has the potential of providing definitive results on the presence of septic infection in less than 6 hours - a nearly 10-fold acceleration compared to the current gold standard of bacteriological culture.If the methodological efficacy of our approach is confirmed, we will have discovered a relatively simple tool for a much quicker diagnosis of sepsis, and ready to be confirmed in a prospective clinical trial with septic patients.