Urinary tract infection detected in an hour by a new device

A German and Ireland led team collaborated to manufacture a medical device which can detect the bacteria presence in urinary tract in an hour’s time

A speedy detection of infection in a urinary tract has been made possible by a group of researchers in Germany and Ireland. The journal published indicates such a medical device which can identify Escherichia coli (more commonly known as E. coli) and Enterococcus faecalis -- two species known to cause urinary tract infections -- within 70 minutes, directly from patients' urine samples

The new diagnosis makes a marked improvement over the previous medical techniques available, which often takes 24 hours of more-to detect a bacterial infection in the urinary tract.

As reported by IANS

The lab-on-a-disc platform uses Raman microscopy, a modern optical detection method.

This medical diagnostics device is designed to harness centrifugal force to capture the tiny bacteria directly from patients' samples of bodily fluids...in this case, urine, the study said.

The work involves extremely small sample sizes, on the scale of a small raindrop, so the device needed to be a microfluidic one.

"Our device works by loading a few micro liters of a patient's urine sample into a tiny chip, which is then rotated with a high angular velocity so that any bacteria is guided by centrifugal force through microfluidic channels to a small chamber where 'V-cup capture units' collect it for optical investigation," Ulrich-Christian Schroder from Leibniz Institute of Technology in Germany explained.

The findings appeared in the journal Biomicrofluidics