A Breath Test to Detect Bacterial Overgrowth in Elderly

细菌过度生长是一种主要在老年人中发现的疾病，据估计，65岁以上的人中有33%会受到影响。如果不治疗，它会引起极大的不适和临床上重要的营养缺乏。其根本原因是与衰老相关的胃酸分泌减少。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，但可以通过治疗有效地控制它。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过度生长，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。这项测试将准确检测治疗前后的情况，并导致生活质量的改善。这一提议的创新之处在于使用了一种非侵入性的呼气测试，该测试使用了一种标有碳-13的天然糖类作为探针。如果存在过度生长，细菌就存在，小肠中的细菌代谢标记的底物，高浓度的CO(2)在呼气中呼出。拟议的商业应用：65岁以上的美国人有2500万，他们中有1000万人在诊所就诊时抱怨典型的肥大症状。拟议中的测试将显著减少全国医疗保健支出，因为适当的诊断将导致更少的办公室就诊，更谨慎的药物使用，以及更好的老年人总体健康和福祉。

Bacterial overgrowth is a condition found primarily in the elderly and is estimated to affect 33% of people over 65 years. It causes great discomfort and clinically important nutritional deficiencies if left untreated. The underlying cause is reduced gastric acid secretion associated with aging. 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 effectively controlled through treatment. Our objective is to develop an easy to use and cost effective test to detect bacterial overgrowth. The clinical utility is the ability to detect the bacteria overgrowth 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 will accurately detect the condition pre- and post-therapy and lead to quality of life improvement. The novelty of this proposal is the use of a non-invasive breath test employing a naturally occurring sugar labeled with carbon-13 as a probe. If overgrowth is present, the bacteria is present, the bacteria in the small intestine metabolize the labeled substrate and high concentrations of (13)CO(2) are expired in the breath. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: 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 proper diagnosis will lead to fewer office visits, more prudent use of drugs and better general health and well-being in the elderly.