A BREATH TEST TO DETECT BACTERIAL OVERGROWTH

细菌过度生长是一种主要发生在老年人身上的疾病。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，至少33%的65岁以上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，因此阻碍了对过度生长的管理。检测是有意义的，因为尽管这种疾病永远无法治愈，但可以通过抗生素加以控制。我们的目标是开发一种易于使用且具有成本效益的检测方法来检测细菌过度生长。临床应用是能够像金标准（空肠培养）一样准确地检测出具有典型疾病症状但通常不会接受昂贵和侵入性空肠培养的患者的细菌。该测试有望准确检测治疗前后的病情，并改善生活质量。它的新颖之处在于，它是一种无创呼吸测试，使用一种标记有碳-13的天然糖作为探针。如果存在过度生长，标记的底物将被小肠中的细菌代谢，高浓度的13CO2在呼吸中释放。拟议的商业应用：65岁以上的美国人有2500万，他们有1000万的医生办公室抱怨典型的过度生长症状。拟议的测试将大大减少国家保健支出，因为正确诊断病例将导致较少的诊所就诊，更谨慎地使用抗生素，并改善老年人的总体健康和福祉。

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.