Investigating the direct detection of sepsis causing bacteria from whole human blood.

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The project investigates the feasibility of detecting bacterial infections, causing sepsis, directly from whole human blood. The process involves lysing the bacterial cells by rapid cyclical freezing and boiling followed by detection of the released nucleic acid by real-time PCR. This novel approach will enable detection of bacterial infection in the critical ,1hr period after sepsis is suspected, leading to more targeted and appropriate use of antibiotics in contrast to the broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment used currently. If the clinician has data outlining which bacteria are present and importantly which antibiotics are likely to be most suitable, then the outcome for the more than 150k annual UK cases of bacterial sepsis will be greatly improved and reduce the 40k annual mortalities attributable to this condition. BGR has demonstrated that the technique and it's instrumentation, the QuRapID, is able to detect blood borne diseases such as Ebola, Zika and Malaria. This project will test infected blood in order to find out if the benefits of the technique can be applied to sepsis, where the number of bacterial cells is much lower than in viral disease. BGR will have access to blood from infected patients to compare on a small scale to existing gold standard methods in use by an NHS hospital.