Rapid diagnosis of urinary tract infection with miniaturised point-of-care cultivation on a dipstick.

Purpose: Urinary Tract InfectionAQ1 (UTI) affects over 400 million people annually and globally and is a major reason for empiric antibiotic prescription by general practitioners (GPs).

Background: A problem related to microbiological UTI diagnosis is the current lack of point of care (POC) diagnostics. In addition, remote settings, including low and middle income countries (LMIC), are hard to service. Compliance with requirements posed by the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) and adherence to guidelines as defined by professional user groups are mandatory to pursue. In addition, the World Health Organisation (WHO) promotes optimization of antimicrobial use and more adequate microbiological diagnostics to cure UTI and combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Methods: Miniaturised chromogenic bacterial cultivation including rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (RAST) at the POC can be successfully used for the diagnosis of UTI. Using small and cost-effective dipsticks containing chromogenic cultivation media, UTI-causing bacteria can be detected, quantified and identified with good sensitivity and specificity.

Conclusion: Access to such trustworthy, easy-to-use and cost-efficient diagnostic tools at the POC would offer more timely results for optimised antibiotic treatment. This will improve UTI therapy and prevent AMR.