University of Iowa researchers have developed a probe they hope can eventually be used to find staph infections in people without having to send samples into a lab. U-I assistant professor of internal medicine, James McNamara, says they’ve developed a probe that can detect an enzyme given off by the staph bacteria. “Basically you can shine light on an animal or on a person, and then you can detect a different wavelength of light coming off wherever there is an infection,” McNamara says.
He says the process of finding a staph infection now can take 24 hours up to days to get confirmation, while it takes around half and hour with the probe. “It’s much faster and we can also see where in the body there might be an infection,” McNamara says. “Current techniques require biopsy and culture to really definitively determine that there is staph infection and where that is in the body.”
Cutting the time from diagnosis to treatment is important. “It spreads so fast. These infections can be emergencies, they can be life-threatening situations,” he explains. “So, at least in some cases, time really is of the essence. And so if the physicians can recognize that there is indeed an infection, where it is, they can choose the appropriate therapy.”
McNamara says once doctors know the location of the infection they can choose the proper medications to attack it. Staph bacteria are common in hospitals and can cause a multitude of problems. “They are one of the most common causes of a lot of different types of infections. They’re a common cause of joint infections, bone infections — which is osteomyelitis — and then these infections can spread from localized infections to the blood, which is a really dangerous situation,” according to McNamara.
The researchers still have some work to do before the device can be used on people.”We need to do toxicity studies in animals and then progress to clinical trials — and that will take some time,” McNamara says. He says though, the development work is “moving pretty rapidly.” McNamara says they expect the final product to be a lot less expensive than the biopsies now used to detect the bacteria. And he says there’s also the cost savings of finding, treating and stopping the bacteria before it can spread in the body and do more damage.