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。它会引起严重的不适和临床上重要的营养缺乏症。一个根本原因是酸的产生减少，这发生在至少33%的65岁以上的人身上。由于不存在低成本和易于使用的诊断测试，阻碍了对过度生长的管理。检测是有意义的，因为虽然这种情况永远无法治愈，但可以通过抗生素控制。我们的目标是开发一种易于使用和成本效益的测试来检测细菌过度生长。 临床实用性是在表现出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中像金标准（空肠培养）一样准确地检测细菌的能力。该测试预计将准确检测治疗前后的病情，并改善生活质量。新颖之处在于，它是一种非侵入性的呼吸测试，使用天然存在的碳13标记的糖作为探针。如果存在过度生长，标记底物将被小肠中的细菌代谢，并在呼吸中呼出高浓度的13CO2。拟议的商业应用：有2500万美国人年龄超过65岁，他们占了1000万医生办公室的投诉典型的过度生长症状。拟议的测试将大大减少国家医疗保健支出，因为正确诊断的病例将导致更少的办公室访问，更谨慎地使用抗生素，以及更好的一般健康和老年人的福祉。

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.