A BREATH TEST TO DETECT BACTERIAL OVERGROWTH

细菌过度生长是一种主要在老年人中发现的疾病。它会引起极大的不适和临床上重要的营养缺乏。一个潜在的原因是产酸减少，65岁以上的人中至少有33%的人会发生这种情况。由于不存在低成本和易于使用的诊断测试，过度生长的管理受到阻碍。检测是有意义的，因为虽然这种情况永远不会治愈，但可以通过抗生素来控制。我们的目标是开发一种易于使用且成本效益高的检测方法来检测细菌过度生长。临床用途是能够像黄金标准(空肠培养)一样准确地检测出患者的细菌，这些患者表现出典型的疾病症状，但通常不会接受昂贵的侵入性空肠培养。这项测试有望准确检测治疗前后的情况，并导致生活质量的改善。新奇之处在于，这是一种非侵入性的呼气测试，使用了一种标有碳-13的自然生成的糖作为探针。如果存在过度生长，标记的底物将被小肠中的细菌代谢，呼吸中高浓度的13CO2将被呼出。拟议的商业应用：美国有2500万65岁以上的人，他们有1000万人去看医生，他们抱怨典型的过度生长症状。拟议的检测将显著减少国家医疗保健支出，因为正确诊断的病例将导致办公室就诊次数减少，更谨慎地使用抗生素，并改善老年人的整体健康和福祉。

Bacterial overgrowth is a condition found primarily in the elderly. It causes great discomfort and clinically important nutritional deficiencies. An underlying cause is decreased acid production, which occurs in at least 33% of people over 65 years. Management of overgrowth is hampered because low cost and easy to use diagnostic tests do not exist. Detection is meaningful because while the condition is never cured it can be controlled through antibiotics. Our objective is to develop an easy to use and cost effective test to detect bacterial overgrowth. Clinical utility is the ability to detect the bacteria as accurately as the gold standard (jejunal cultures) in patients exhibiting classic disease symptoms but whom ordinarily wouldn't receive expensive and invasive jejunal culture. The test is expected to accurately detect the condition pre and post therapy and lead to quality of life improvement. The novelty is that it is a non-invasive breath test that uses a naturally occurring sugar labeled with carbon-13 as a probe. If overgrowth is present, the labeled substrate will be metabolized by the bacteria in the small intestine and high concentrations of 13CO2 expired in the breath. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: There are 25 million Americans over the age of 65 and they accounted for 10 million physician office visits with complaints of classic overgrowth symptoms. The proposed test will significantly reduce national health care expenditures because properly diagnosed cases will be lead to fewer office visits, more prudent use of antibiotics and better general health and well being in the elderly.