QuantuMDx and Ontera collaborate to advance sepsis diagnosis

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, UK/ CALIFORNIA, USA (10 Dec 2019). QuantuMDx Group Limited and Ontera, Inc have announced a collaboration to create a next-generation solution for blood stream infection and drug resistance detection. The technology will be based on QuantuMDx’s rapid cell/sample preparation technology, Capture-XT® and Ontera’s powerful nanopore biosensor, currently utilized in their SAM and DUO Nano platforms.The combined technologies should enable clinicians to quickly interrogate blood specimens of those presenting with sepsis signs and symptoms, allowing guided ‘right first time’ care management, at the bedside.Sepsis affects more than 30 million people worldwide every year leading to an estimated 6 million deaths.¹ If it’s not recognized early and managed promptly with targeted antibiotics, sepsis can lead to septic shock, multiple organ failure and death.QuantuMDx’s revolutionary Capture-XT® technology captures, concentrates and enriches targeted pathogens from a large sample volume, quickly enabling visual diagnosis and downstream utilization, such as drug-susceptibility analysis, PCR, NGS and now nanopore detection, with this collaboration.Ontera’s single pore platform provides fast amplification of multiple bacterial targets, differentiation between antibiotic resistant and susceptible strains. The company uses silicon nanopore for in-minutes quantitative measurement of nucleic acids, proteins and small molecules, avoiding time-consuming laboratory procedures that can delay lifesaving, fast and precise treatment.

GE Healthcare to Expand OHSU Mission Control Capabilities to Support Sepsis Patient Care

GE Healthcare today announced plans to increase the capabilities of OHSU’s Mission Control Center by developing a software application, or “tile,” that will suggest actions to support better management of sepsis patient care.GE Healthcare’s new tile will support early sepsis detection and timely, precise ongoing management of at-risk patients and those who are on the sepsis patient pathway, monitoring all patients not only those who are in the intensive care unit. Once the algorithm detects risk, it will flag mission controllers who will research the situation and help care teams as needed to ensure a rapid response and the best possible patient care.“Sepsis is difficult to diagnose, and if not treated early, is associated with high mortality rates,” said Matthias Merkel, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of adult critical care and chief medical capacity Officer at OHSU; and professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine. “The objective of this new sepsis tile and algorithm is to provide our team with a head start to help us catch sepsis before it strikes.”
In July 2017, OHSU opened its Mission Control Center to reduce delays in patient care, improve patient transfers and utilization between the three hospitals within the health system; reduce length of stay; and connect disparate data systems.
OHSU is the first hospital in the Pacific Northwest region to launch GE Healthcare’s NASA-style Mission Control Center to coordinate care between an academic health center and partner community hospitals.

Pneumonia or sepsis in adults associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease

Sophia Antipolis. Pneumonia or sepsis in adults that results in hospital admission is associated with a six-fold increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the first year, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.1 Cardiovascular risk was more than doubled in years two and three after the infection and persisted for at least five years.“Severe infections in adulthood are associated with a contemporaneously raised risk of cardiovascular disease,” said last author Professor Scott Montgomery, director of the clinical epidemiology group, Örebro University, Sweden. “Whether this raised risk persists for several years after infection is less well established.”This study examined if hospital admission for sepsis or pneumonia is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the years following infection, and whether there is a period of particularly heightened risk.The study included 236 739 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive physical and psychological examinations at around age 18 years as part of compulsory military conscription assessments. The researchers obtained infection and cardiovascular disease diagnoses from a register that has recorded information on patients admitted to hospital since 1964. The men were followed from late adolescence into middle age (follow-up was completed in 2010).During the follow-up period, a total of 46 754 men (19.7%) had a first diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. There were 9 987 hospital admissions for pneumonia or sepsis among 8 534 men who received these diagnoses.The researchers found that infection was associated with a 6.33-fold raised risk of cardiovascular disease during the first year after the infection. In the second and third years following an infection, cardiovascular disease risk remained raised by 2.47 and 2.12 times. Risk decreased with time but was still raised for at least five years after the infection by nearly two–fold (hazard ratio 1.87).Similar findings were observed for coronary heart disease, stroke, and fatal cardiovascular disease. The persistently raised risk could not be explained by subsequent severe infections.“Our results indicate that the risk of cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease and stroke, was increased after hospital admission for sepsis or pneumonia,” said lead author Dr Cecilia Bergh, an affiliated researcher at Örebro University. “The risk remained notably raised for three years after infection and was still nearly two-fold after five years.”When the researchers examined the relationship between other risk factors such as high blood pressure, overweight, obesity, poorer physical fitness, and household crowding in childhood, they found that infection was associated with the highest magnitude of cardiovascular disease risk in the first three years post-infection.Professor Montgomery said: “Conventional cardiovascular risk factors are still important but infection may be the primary source of risk for a limited time.”The authors said the results point to a causal relationship, since cardiovascular disease risk is very high immediately after infection and reduces with time. Persistent systemic inflammation after a severe infection may play a role, as inflammation is a risk for cardiovascular disease. Most patients with sepsis or pneumonia recover but many still have high circulating inflammatory markers after the acute phase of the infection.
Professor Montgomery said: “Our findings provide another reason to protect against infection and suggest that there is a post-infection window of increased cardiovascular disease risk. We did not study any interventions that could be initiated during this period, but preventative therapies such as statins could be investigated.”

Ultraviolet air steriliser reduces sepsis and mortality in cardiac surgery patients

Lisbon, Portugal An ultraviolet air steriliser reduces sepsis and mortality in cardiac surgery patients, according to research presented today at Acute Cardiovascular Care 2016.1“Hospital-acquired infections are the most common postoperative complication in the intensive care unit (ICU) and are associated with longer hospital stay, higher mortality rates, and increased healthcare costs,” said lead author Dr Juan Bustamante Munguira, a physician at the University Hospital La Princesa in Madrid, Spain. He continued: “Pathogens are transmitted through the air, and by touching skin, clothes, and medical instruments and devices. Several studies have shown that standard cleaning methods are not effective for killing pathogens. Novel disinfection technologies, such as hydrogen peroxide vapour, ozone mists, or ultra microfibre cloths, have emerged to solve this situation.”This prospective, randomised and non-interventional clinical trial evaluated the impact of an ultraviolet air steriliser on clinical outcomes of patients in ICU who had undergone cardiac surgery. The study included 1097 patients, who were randomised to an ICU with (522 patients) or without (575 patients) the steriliser.
Patients were 68 years of age on average and 67% were men. EuroSCORE2 before surgery was similar between groups (6.90 in patients with the steriliser and 7.02 in those without), which indicates that they had the same risk of dying during or shortly after heart surgery.
The investigators found that sepsis occurred in 3.4% of patients using the steriliser compared to 6.7% patients not using the steriliser (p = 0.02). The 30 day in-hospital mortality rate was significantly lower in patients using the ultraviolet air steriliser (3.8%) compared to the group without it (6.4%).Dr Bustamante Munguira said: “Sepsis, also called blood poisoning, can be caused by an infection and is potentially life-threatening. We found lower rates of sepsis and mortality in patients who recovered from cardiac surgery in an ICU fitted with an ultraviolet air steriliser.” The incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia was lower in the ultraviolet group but the difference between groups was not statistically significant. The length of stay in ICU and the hospital was similar in both groups. A logistic regression model showed that age, emergency (unscheduled) surgery, and the absence of the ultraviolet air steriliser were each independently associated with 30 day in-hospital mortality. Dr Bustamante Munguira said: “Our research shows that the ultraviolet air steriliser was independently associated with lower 30 day in-hospital mortality. The ultraviolet radiation is harmless to humans but kills microorganisms including bacteria, viruses and spores by inactivating their RNA or DNA.”He concluded: “Our research indicates that this technology may help reduce hospital infections and deaths, and larger studies may find a statistically significant benefit on pneumonia. This is a relatively new area of research and a cost effectiveness study in more patients is needed.”