Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, St Mary's Hospital, 10Th Floor, QEQM Wing, London, W2 1NY, UK.
Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London, London, SW1 2AZ, UK.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 22;11(1):8802. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88026-9.
Urinary tract infection is one of the most common bacterial infections leading to increased morbidity, mortality and societal costs. Current diagnostics exacerbate this problem due to an inability to provide timely pathogen identification. Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has the potential to overcome these issues by providing immediate bacterial classification. To date, achieving accurate classification has required technically complicated processes to capture pathogens, which has precluded the integration of SERS into rapid diagnostics. This work demonstrates that gold-coated membrane filters capture and aggregate bacteria, separating them from urine, while also providing Raman signal enhancement. An optimal gold coating thickness of 50 nm was demonstrated, and the diagnostic performance of the SERS-active filters was assessed using phantom urine infection samples at clinically relevant concentrations (10 CFU/ml). Infected and uninfected (control) samples were identified with an accuracy of 91.1%. Amongst infected samples only, classification of three bacteria (Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Klebsiella pneumoniae) was achieved at a rate of 91.6%.
尿路感染是最常见的细菌性感染之一，导致发病率、死亡率和社会成本增加。由于无法及时确定病原体，目前的诊断方法加剧了这一问题。表面增强拉曼光谱（SERS）有可能通过提供即时的细菌分类来克服这些问题。迄今为止，要实现准确的分类，需要采用技术上复杂的方法来捕获病原体，这使得 SERS 无法集成到快速诊断中。这项工作表明，金涂层膜过滤器可以捕获和聚集细菌，将其与尿液分离，同时还提供拉曼信号增强。结果表明，50nm 的金涂层厚度是最佳的，并用临床相关浓度（10 CFU/ml）的幻影尿液感染样本评估了 SERS 活性过滤器的诊断性能。受感染和未受感染（对照）样本的识别准确率为 91.1%。在受感染的样本中，仅对三种细菌（大肠杆菌、粪肠球菌、肺炎克雷伯菌）的分类达到了 91.6%的准确率。
