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There are many different bacteria and other organisms, including fungi, that can cause these bloodstream infections. Some bacteria may also be resistant to standard antibiotics. Previous research has shown that as many as 30% of patients receive antibiotics that are not expected to work when they first come to hospital.
Currently, the method of identifying which organisms are responsible for infections in hospital is to grow them from a blood sample. This can take between one and three days; if bacteria are successfully grown, they are then grown again in different antibiotics to see which will kill them and which the bacteria are resistant to. This informs which antibiotics should be used to treat the patient successfully.
The research team, supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC): Oxford, developed a method based on genetic sequencing to work out in real time which bacteria were causing infections and at the same time which antibiotics they were resistant to.
The study, whose findings were published in The Lancet Microbe, was led by David Eyre, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.