DESIGN OF NOVEL SAMPLE HANDLING TOOL TO FACILITATE MOLECULAR DIAGNOSIS OF INFECTION WITHOUT BLOOD CULTURING

Bacterial infections can lead to many diseases, ranging from a simple food poisoning to severe arthritis. They are also the most common cause of healthcare linked infections. The Health care linked infections often known as Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), have become one of the major public health threats. A prerequisite for successful treatment of any bacterial infection stems in the early yet sensitive diagnostic test that can detect the bacteria with high specificity. Point of care diagnostic underlying research outlined in this paper discusses at length the product development and proof of concept of one such point-of-care diagnostic test. This proof of concept describes the method developed for sample processing and molecular diagnostics. The entire procedure takes only about 120 minutes, avoiding laborious blood cultures and provides a detection limit of ~1-10 CFU/mL bacteria. This diagnostic test can be used as a high throughput screening platform to diagnose a wide range of microorganisms from blood samples.