Antibiotic sensitivity test for urinary tract infections
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of a simple and rapid antibiotic sensitivity test for urinary tract infections.
IRAS ID
248709
Contact name
Duncan Henderson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Microbiosensor Ltd.
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 20 days
Research summary
In the UK, urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a common cause of avoidable emergency hospital admissions and are particularly prevalent in the frail elderly.
GPs often begin antibiotic treatment without having information on the antibiotic sensitivities of bacteria causing the infection. After a few days of treatment it will become apparent if the antibiotic was effective or not, depending on if the patient recovers. If the patient does not recover, then a urine sample will be sent to the hospital for microbiology testing to determine the susceptibilities of the bacteria. The time to receive this result can be up to 4 days. This can result in a significant delay from the diagnosis of a UTI to treatment with an effective antibiotic, during which time (particularly with the elderly) the patient can deteriorate.
Microbiosensor is developing a test which can detect bacteria in urine and indicate whether the bacteria are susceptible to a range of different antibiotics commonly used to treat UTIs. It is intended that this test will be developed to be used by care home staff and other healthcare workers and therefore give antibiotic susceptibility information closer to the point of care more rapidly than current systems.In previous studies, urine was collected from elderly care home residents to optimise the test system in the laboratory, however most of these samples did not come from patients with UTIs and so we now need to test using real UTI samples to optimise the system.
In the proposed study, we will use anonymised urine samples directly from the hospital microbiology laboratory, from patients that have a suspected UTI, to validate the function of the device. This will provide Microbiosensor with a large number of UTI samples that have a variety of bacteria with a range of antibiotic sensitivities.
REC name
North East - Tyne & Wear South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NE/0218
Date of REC Opinion
3 Jul 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion