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Phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing of pathogenic bacteria using photonic readout methods: recent achievements and impact

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Abstract

The development of antibiotic resistances in common pathogens is an increasing challenge for therapy of infections and especially severe complications like sepsis. To prevent administration of broad-spectrum and potentially non-effective antibiotics, the susceptibility spectrum of the pathogens underlying the infection has to be determined. Current phenotypic standard methods for antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) require the isolation of pathogens from the patient and the subsequent culturing in the presence of antibiotics leading to results only after 24–72 h. Since the early initialization of an effective antibiotic therapy is crucial for positive treatment result in severe infections, faster methods of AST are urgently needed. A large number of different assay systems are currently tested for their practicability for fast detection of antibiotic resistance profiles. They can be divided into genotypic ones which detect the presence of certain genes or gene products associated with resistances and phenotypic assays which determine the effect of antibiotics on the pathogens. In this mini-review, we summarize current developments in fast phenotypic tests that use photonic approaches and critically discuss their status. We further outline steps that are required to bring these assays into clinical practice.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Michael Zürch, Charlotte Grohs and Christian Kirchberg for proofreading the manuscript.

Funding

This work is financially supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung via the Integrated Research and Treatment Center “Center for Sepsis Control and Care” (CSCC, FKZ 01EO1502), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via the Core Facility Jena Biophotonic and Imaging Laboratory (JBIL), as well as the European Union via HemoSpec (FP7-ICT-2013-CN-611682). Furthermore, the work was performed within the Research Campus InfectoGnostics (FKZ 13GW0096F), the Leibniz ScienceCampus InfectoOptics (SAS-2015-HKI-LWC), and the COST Action “Raman-based applications for clinical diagnostics—Raman4Clinics” (BM 1401).

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Correspondence to Ute Neugebauer.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals.

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Tannert, A., Grohs, R., Popp, J. et al. Phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing of pathogenic bacteria using photonic readout methods: recent achievements and impact. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 103, 549–566 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9505-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9505-4

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