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When patients show up in the hospital with a respiratory illness, they are usually given an antibiotic which do not work against viral infections. Even though most of these respiratroy infections are viral, it is estimated that in these cases antibiotics are incorrectly prescribed nearly three quaters of the time, and the overuse of antibiotics is a huge problem helping to drive the development of strains of bacteria that are resistent to our antibiotics. So scientists have been searching for a tool that would quickly allow the doctors to diagnose whether a patient has a viral or bacteria infection and thus know for sure whether to prescribe an antibiotic.
"The new approach we take rests on the premise that anytime we are exposed to something in our environment, whether it's cigarette, smoke, changes in our diet and infection, our bodies react to that'" Frank of Duke University. He and his colleagues investigated gene expression. Which genes are activated, which remain dormant in 270 emergency room patients. Some had a bacteria infection, some had a viral one,some had both and some had no commutable disease at all.The researchers also studied body for healthy adult as a control. "What we found are some elements in certain genes that are turned on and off in a certain way that is very characteristic of a response to a viral infection. Other sets of genes that are turned on and off in a way that is very characteristic of a bacteria infection, and then other genes that are turned on and off in a way that is indicative of no infection at all."
They then tested these genetic activation signatures against the publically available datasets of patients and infections. The method was eighty-seven percent accurate. The study is in the journal Science Transitional Medicine.Right now such gene tests will take about ten hours to attain a diagnosis, so the researchers are working to develop a diagnostic tool that would cut that turnaround time to just one hour so that doctors could quickly prescribe antibiotics but only to patiets who had get a benefit because they have a bacteria and not a viral infection, which ultimately benefits everyone.
Decrease the amount of antibiotics that are used in general is one of the strategies to trying improve the antibiotic resistance prob
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