Issue 14, 2020

Point-of-care testing system for digital single cell detection of MRSA directly from nasal swabs

Abstract

We present an automated point-of-care testing (POCT) system for rapid detection of species- and resistance markers in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at the level of single cells, directly from nasal swab samples. Our novel system allows clear differentiation between MRSA, methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci (MR-CoNS), which is not the case for currently used real-time quantitative PCR based systems. On top, the novel approach outcompetes the culture-based methods in terms of its short time-to-result (1 h vs. up to 60 h) and reduces manual labor. The walk-away test is fully automated on the centrifugal microfluidic LabDisk platform. The LabDisk cartridge comprises the unit operations swab-uptake, reagent pre-storage, distribution of the sample into 20 000 droplets, specific enzymatic lysis of Staphylococcus spp. and recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) of species (vicK) – and resistance (mecA) -markers. LabDisk actuation, incubation and multi-channel fluorescence detection is demonstrated with a clinical isolate and spiked nasal swab samples down to a limit of detection (LOD) of 3 ± 0.3 CFU μl−1 for MRSA. The novel approach of the digital single cell detection is suggested to improve hospital admission screening, timely decision making, and goal-oriented antibiotic therapy. The implementation of a higher degree of multiplexing is required to translate the results into clinical practice.

Graphical abstract: Point-of-care testing system for digital single cell detection of MRSA directly from nasal swabs

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 Mar 2020
Accepted
19 May 2020
First published
22 Jun 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Lab Chip, 2020,20, 2549-2561

Point-of-care testing system for digital single cell detection of MRSA directly from nasal swabs

M. Schulz, S. Calabrese, F. Hausladen, H. Wurm, D. Drossart, K. Stock, A. M. Sobieraj, F. Eichenseher, M. J. Loessner, M. Schmelcher, A. Gerhardts, U. Goetz, M. Handel, A. Serr, G. Haecker, J. Li, M. Specht, P. Koch, M. Meyer, P. Tepper, R. Rother, M. Jehle, S. Wadle, R. Zengerle, F. von Stetten, N. Paust and N. Borst, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 2549 DOI: 10.1039/D0LC00294A

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