Old school bacteriology revisited: need for in-depth knowledge on bacterial growth to tune diagnosis of bloodstream infections for use in low resource settings

Bloodstream infections (BSI) are an important concern for public
health. In low resource settings, they account for more deaths than
malaria, and are one of the main causes of child mortality. Yet even
high-income countries are burdened by BSI. Starting appropriate
antibiotic treatment early is pivotal for patient outcome and in turn
depends on timely determination of the pathogen’s antibiotic
susceptibility. The current standard for detecting BSI is a multistep
process which may take one to several days. Improving and
accelerating this process would have a major impact, especially in
low resource settings. Private companies have ameliorated this
process by developing blood culture automates and improved blood
culture bottles. However, this is not suitable for low resource settings,
and the knowledge gained in this process is proprietary. With this
project, we are going back to basics, aiming to gain a better
understanding of the methods and processes to shorten the time-topositivity
of blood cultures. Our recently developed Turbidimeter will
enable us to evaluate how the different components of blood culture
bottles influence bacterial growth. This information is key to the
design of a ready-to-use formulation of the ideal blood culture bottle
and will allow us to implement better and faster diagnosis of BSI
where it is really needed.