New 30-Minute Blood Test to Reduce Sepsis Deaths

BARCELONA, Spain, April 26, 2019 — A new detector using photonics to identify E. coli bacteria from a tiny drop of blood in less than 30 minutes could help reduce the mortality rate from sepsis by more than 70%. 

Programmed to detect proteins and E.coli, one of the deadly bacteria that can cause the human body to go into septic shock, the detector uses light to look for specific biomarkers (the tell-tale signs or indicators of a disease) that are as small as a few nanometers in size, or 1/1,000,000th of the thickness of a single human hair.

The rapid microarray detector looks at a small blood sample taken from a thumb or forefinger. The patient’s blood sample is then separated in a centrifuge so that a clinician can examine the plasma, the part of the blood sample where all the proteins are contained.