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Test for rapid detection of antibiotic resistance mechanisms and microorganisms successfully validated

25 de February de 2022

The proliferation of antibiotic multi-resistant bacteria is one of the major global health problems of the 21st century. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has listed antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as one of the top ten public health threats facing humanity.

A study published in The Lancet this January shows that there were 4.95 million deaths associated with antibiotic resistance in 2019, 1.27 million of them being directly attributable to it, a figure that is even higher than for diseases such as HIV or malaria. Nationally, data from the EPINE study (Study of Prevalence of Nosocomial Infections in Spain, 2019) have revealed that 17% of healthcare-associated infections were caused by some form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It is therefore important to tackle this “silent pandemic” with methods that help to detect resistance mechanisms and microorganisms. Vitro S.A., offers the MDR Direct Flow Chip Kit for rapid detection of these multi-resistant bacteria to antibiotics, delivering results in under four hours.

As Dr Ángel Rodríguez Villodres from the Infectious Diseases, Microbiology and Preventive Medicine Clinical Unit at Virgen del Rocío University Hospital in Seville states, “the use of inappropriate antibiotic treatments is directly associated with an increase in the length of hospital stay and patient mortality. Early detection of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms therefore allows us to reduce the chances of therapeutic failure caused by inappropriate antibiotic treatments in the first hours of infection, when getting the antibiotic treatment right is essential”.

The kit can also be used to detect a total of sixty molecular targets in a single assay (five of them to specifically identify the most important multi-resistant bacteria), along with 55 antibiotic resistance markers commonly used in the hospital setting (belonging to nine different classes of antibiotics).

The effectiveness of the kit has been validated at Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville. It has been shown to work correctly both through clinical isolates (direct use of bacterial colonies) and in clinical samples: positive blood cultures, rectal exudates and nasopharyngeal exudates. “It is to be hoped that tools such as the MDR Direct Flow Chip Kit will optimise empirical antibiotic treatment for patients, leading to better prognosis of the infection and, in turn, lower mortality associated with this type of infection,” indicates the expert.

In clinical validation studies, and after analysing 198 varying samples, the MDR Direct Flow Chip Kit showed an outstanding correlation between the resistance markers detected at molecular level and the antibiotic susceptibility profile exhibited by the clinical isolates obtained with routine phenotypic characterisation methods.

It has therefore been certified that the MDR Direct Flow Chip Kit shortens diagnosis time, meaning its implementation in microbiology services may help optimise patient management and avoid therapeutic failures. It can also be useful in preventing the spread of antimicrobial resistance and the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics.