Testing for multiple drug-resistant pathogens in rural parts of developing countries is often difficult due to the lack of laboratories and resources. Researchers have developed a portable detection system designed to improve care to these remote patients by identifying 16 different pathogens.

Of 1.5 billion people affected by microbial infections, many of them live in isolated communities without means of diagnosing these pathogens. Caregivers are often left to play a guessing game on what pathogen a patient has. The work was published Dec. 16 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

“For example, when an infection's cause can't be identified with certainty, caregivers frequently use broad spectrum antibiotics to boost the probability of killing the pathogen. Unfortunately, as compared to precisely targeted antibiotics, the use of broad spectrum antibiotics increases the likelihood of spreading antimicrobial resistance genes,” said first author Lars D. Renner, PhD, Group Leader at the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research, and the Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials, Dresden, Germany.

The portable detection system is battery powered, small and easy to use. With 16 mirochambers, each containing a genetic sequence of each of the 16 pathogens it is meant to detect, the device only needs one drop of the patient’s sample to give a reading. These pathogens include: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and various species of the genus, Enterobacter.