New approach cuts sepsis diagnosis from days to hours
Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues more than 1.5 million patients a year in the U.S. alone, with one in three deaths recorded in hospitals attributed in part to sepsis. Despite the severity of the condition, which can kill in as little as 12 hours, it takes between two and seven days for most traditional approaches to…
Sepsis, a life-threatening condition, claims the lives of more than 1.5 million patients annually in the U.S., with one in three hospital deaths linked to sepsis. Currently, traditional methods take between two and seven days to identify the bacteria responsible for blood infections. Engineers at Penn State have created a new method to rapidly diagnose sepsis within hours.
The innovative approach involves growing bacteria from blood samples and simultaneously analyzing them using advanced techniques to identify the specific pathogens causing infection. This breakthrough, published in Science Advances, could help prevent antibiotic resistance and improve clinical decision-making for blood infections.
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