A new blood test can help doctors tease out whether an infection is caused by a bacteria or a virus within two hours, research in Plos One suggests.<\/p>\n
It could stop patients being given antibiotics when they are not needed, scientists say.<\/p>\n
It is still at a laboratory stage but the team is working on a portable device too.<\/p>\n
Independent experts say the work addresses a serious problem. Further studies are being carried out.<\/p>\n
Appropriate drugs<\/span><\/p>\n Doctors face a number of challenges when deciphering which bug is responsible for an infection and the treatment that would best tackle it.<\/p>\n Routine tests to check the definitive identity of bugs can take days – they often involve taking a sample and then trying to grow the organism in a lab.<\/p>\n Tests of particles in the blood can also help give clues, but some are raised in both bacterial and viral infections and in cancer and trauma too.<\/p>\n As a result sometimes antibiotics – which only work on bacteria – are overused.<\/p>\n And in contrast some patients who need antibiotics don’t get them soon enough.<\/p>\n The team of scientists from several medical centres in Israel, in collaboration with the company MeMed, developed the new test.<\/p>\n Analyzing blood samples of more than 300 patients who were suspected of having an infection, they found it could correctly detect a virus or a bacterial infection in the majority of cases.<\/p>\n Eran Eden, of MeMed said: “The test is accurate. For most patients you can tell whether the infection was caused by a bacteria or virus within two hours.<\/p>\n “It is not perfect and it does not replace a physician’s judgement, but it is better than many of the routine tests used in practice today.”<\/p>\n Protein signatures<\/span><\/p>\n It relies on the fact that bacteria and viruses can trigger different protein pathways once they infect the body.<\/p>\n A novel one, called TRAIL, was particularly high in viral infections and depleted during bacterial ones. They combined this with two other proteins – one is already used in routine practice.<\/p>\n Prof Jonathan Ball, a virus expert at Nottingham University, said: “The work addresses a really serious problem. Being able to identify a possible infection early on and then to be able to differentiate between a possible viral or bacterial cause, is important.<\/p>\n “This will allow informed clinical intervention and minimise the need for inappropriate use of antibiotics, for example with someone infected by a virus.<\/p>\n “It will be important to see how it performs in the long-term.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new blood test can help doctors tease out whether an infection is caused by a bacteria or a virus within two hours, research in Plos One suggests. It could stop patients being given antibiotics when they are not needed, scientists say. It is still at a laboratory stage but the team is working on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":100685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-100684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-chinese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}