Precision diagnostics: breakthrough test can screen all known bacterial infections simultaneously

A team of scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) in the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (NY, USA) have reported their success in creating an extremely sensitive diagnostic screening platform, named BacCapSeq, which allows testing for all known human bacterial pathogens, at once.

The research published in the journal mBio details the power of the platform and its performance. To assess the BacCapSeq’s diagnosing strength several tests were carried out: tests with nucleic acids from blood samples contaminated with DNA from several different bacteria, contaminated blood samples with bacterial cells, blood culture samples, and blood samples from patients with sepsis of unidentified cause.