Background: The annual mortality burden of antimicrobial resistant infections exceeds 1.27 million/year. With serious infections, every hour without effective antimicrobial therapy results in a 6.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is an urgent need to develop simple and fast antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs) that allow informed prescribing of antibiotics. Here, we describe a label-free AST that can deliver results within an hour, using an actively dividing culture as starting material. The bacteria are incubated in the presence of an antibiotic for 30 min, and then approximately 10 cells are analysed one-by-one with microfluidic impedance cytometry for 2-3 min.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntimicrobial susceptibility is slow to determine, taking several days to fully impact treatment. This proof-of-concept study assessed the feasibility of using machine-learning techniques for analysis of data produced by the flow cytometer-assisted antimicrobial susceptibility test (FAST) method we developed. We used machine learning to assess the effect of antimicrobial agents on bacteria, comparing FAST results with broth microdilution (BMD) antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeritoneal dialysis (PD) peritonitis cases require rapid clinical interventions to ensure the best possible patient outcomes. Culture-dependent microbiology tools are slow and cannot provide clinicians with evidence to guide antimicrobial prescription practices in an appropriate time frame. Genotypic methods have met with limited success for analyzing continuous ambulatory PD effluent, with most centers still relying on culture-dependent microbiology.
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View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe major complication of peritoneal dialysis (PD) is the development of peritonitis, an infection within the abdominal cavity, primarily caused by bacteria. PD peritonitis is associated with significant morbidity, mortality and health care costs. Staphylococcus epidermidis is the most frequently isolated cause of PD-associated peritonitis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe expanding global distribution of multi-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae demands faster antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) to guide antibiotic treatment. Current ASTs rely on time-consuming differentiation of resistance and susceptibility after initial isolation of bacteria from a clinical specimen. Here we describe a flow cytometry workflow to determine carbapenem susceptibility from bacterial cell characteristics in an international K.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtremely acidophilic microorganisms (pH optima for growth of ≤3) are utilized for the extraction of metals from sulfide minerals in the industrial biotechnology of "biomining." A long term goal for biomining has been development of microbial consortia able to withstand increased chloride concentrations for use in regions where freshwater is scarce. However, when challenged by elevated salt, acidophiles experience both osmotic stress and an acidification of the cytoplasm due to a collapse of the inside positive membrane potential, leading to an influx of protons.
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