Lung probe used to diagnose bacterial infections

A lung probe developed by scientists at the universities of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt and Bath has been designed to rapidly diagnose bacterial lung infections to help prevent unnecessary use of antibiotics in intensive care units.

The bedside technology, also known as Proteus, can detect whether harmful bacteria are present within 60 seconds, so that patients can be treated with the correct medicine quickly.

Currently, around 20 million patients in intensive care need machines to help them breathe each year, while up to one third of these patients are suspected as having serious lung infections during their time in intensive care.

Doctors usually rely on X-rays and blood tests for diagnosis, but these can be slow and imprecise.

Proteus works by using chemicals which become florescent when they attach to particular types of bacterial infection. This is detected using fibre-optic tubes that are small enough to be threaded deep inside patients’ lungs, reaching parts of the lungs existing tools cannot.

Tim Jinks, head of Drug Resistant Infection at the Wellcome Trust, commented: “Drug resistant infection is already a huge global health challenge – and it is getting worse. We need global powers to work together on a number of fronts – from the beginning to the end of the drug and diagnostic development pipeline.

CARB-X is supporting projects like Proteus to build a robust pipeline of products to fulfil this need.”