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New DNA test diagnoses bacterial infection.

Ema

Senior Member
Messages
4,729
Location
Midwest USA
It seems bizarre that after all that, as sick as he was, that they wouldn't have just tried some simple antibiotics first and spared him some suffering!

The technology is exciting, of course, but really, what did they have to lose by giving him some penicillin to start?
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
I just heard this story on NPR news. There is another patient who was also treated by a pathogin found in her dna.

In the boy's case time was of the essence and even though his brain was inflamed there were no pathogens in his spinal fluid. Encephalitis is very hard to diagnose as well as time consuming . Most
cases of encephalitis are viral.

I would like to find out if they did try antibiotics. You would think with his health status, they would try this just in case it was bacteria.l.

If anyone finds out, please post.

Barb
 

nandixon

Senior Member
Messages
1,092
I just heard this story on NPR news. There is another patient who was also treated by a pathogin found in her dna.

In the boy's case time was of the essence and even though his brain was inflamed there were no pathogens in his spinal fluid. Encephalitis is very hard to diagnose as well as time consuming . Most cases of encephalitis are viral.

I would like to find out if they did try antibiotics. You would think with his health status, they would try this just in case it was bacterial.

If anyone finds out, please post.

Barb

I believe this may be the NPR article. It also contains a link to download a copy of the research report ("A cloud-compatible bioinformatics pipeline for ultrarapid pathogen identification from next-generation sequencing of clinical samples"):
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...edical-mysteries-otherwise-missed?ft=1&f=1007
 

maryb

iherb code TAK122
Messages
3,602
Location
UK
I agree about the a/biotics, and I mean penicillin of all things that was the right drug, why wouldn't you throw everything at this kid - in intensive care for god's sake. I wouldn't be impressed if I were his parents.

But of course it was the technology that I sincerely hope they can develop quickly, (having waited 41/2 weeks for a test result from Igenex) unless these labs embrace it they'll be out of the window.

I'm presuming if they have the DNA of the bacteria/virus then they can run tests for it on the fluid, I mean does anyone understand it better, would that mean maybe they could run say a hundred through a machine at a time?
 
Messages
15,786
I'm presuming if they have the DNA of the bacteria/virus then they can run tests for it on the fluid, I mean does anyone understand it better, would that mean maybe they could run say a hundred through a machine at a time?
I think so ... I got the impression that instead of seeing what can stick to certain chips, they're grabbing all the DNA and sequencing it. DNA sequences for many (most?) pathogens are known somewhat, so they can just compare the sequenced results to databases which have the DNA for the pathogens.