Patients with bacterial infections who are promptly diagnosed and treated with the most effective antibiotic fare better than those who wait. But current methods of identifying which drug will kill the pathogen take days to yield results, and thus patients are often prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics while waiting for a diagnosis. The overuse of these types of antibiotics has driven the emergence of drug-resistant microbes, which kill 35,000 Americans each year, according to a recent CDC estimate.
A new diagnostic approach developed by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) could help tackle this problem, by allowing physicians to accurately find the best antibiotic within hours rather than days. This rapid test could potentially be applied to any bacterial infection and antibiotic.
“The ability to quickly and accurately identify the best antibiotic would greatly improve the care of patients with infection, while ensuring that our arsenal of antibiotics is deployed intelligently and efficiently,” said Deborah Hung, a core institute member at the Broad and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and MGH who led the development of the test.
