For patients with bacterial infections, the sooner they are treated with the appropriate antibiotics, the better they will fare. Current methods for determining which drugs might work for each patient rely on growing bacteria from the patient in the lab and take days to yield results. In the meantime, patients are often given broad-spectrum antibiotics, which encourage drug-resistant infections, a significant public health threat.
An innovative diagnostic approach developed by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and at Massachusetts General Hospital could one day help patients get the most effective treatment faster, which could reduce the need for broad-spectrum antibacterials. The method, called Genotypic and Phenotypic Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing through RNA detection, or GoPhAST-R, analyzes the growth and genetic activity of the bacteria to quickly determine the pathogen’s susceptibility to various medicines. Now, the researchers have demonstrated the approach’s potential in a pilot study on blood cultures from patients undergoing inpatient treatment for infections.
The findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
