Significance: Drug-resistant pathogens are one of the major global health risks. However, conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) approaches, which typically rely on overnight culture to isolate bacteria, require 3–5 days. Despite rapid pathogen identification techniques having been developed, the ability to rapidly determine bacteria susceptibility represents an unmet need in clinical microbiology. Existing rapid AST techniques are often designed based on a small panel of bacteria and the system neither provides information about the bacterial species nor distinguishes polymicrobial samples. By incorporating an adaptable microfluidic design, we demonstrate a phenotypic AST system that rapidly determines the existence of bacteria, classifies major classes of bacteria, detects polymicrobial samples, and identifies antimicrobial susceptibility directly from clinical samples at the single-cell level.

A bioinspired system enables rapid, near-patient urine testing for metabolic evaluation of stone formers.

Accurate and timely detection of bacterial pathogens will improve the clinical management of infections. Herein, we demonstrate an electrochemical biosensor that directly detects bacteria in human blood samples, resulting in the rapid diagnosis of a bloodstream infection. The multiplex biosensor detects the species-specific sequences of the 16S ribosomal RNA of bacteria for pathogen identification in physiological samples without preamplification. The analytical performance characteristics of the biosensor, including the limit of detection and probe cross-reactivity, are evaluated systematically. The feasibility of the biosensor for a diagnosis of a bloodstream infection is demonstrated by identifying bacterial clinical isolates spiked in whole blood and blood culture samples that were tested positive for bacteria. The electrochemical biosensor correctly identifies all the species in the samples with 100% concordance to microbiological analysis.