Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) accounts for 90% of diabetes cases worldwide. The majority of T2DM patients are obese. Dysbiosis in the gut microflora is strongly associated with the pathogenesis of obesity and T2DM; however, the microbiome of obese-T2DM individuals in the Pakistani population remains unexplored. The gut microbiota signature of 60 Pakistani adults was studied using 16S rRNA sequencing targeting V₃–V₄ hypervariable regions. The sequence analysis revealed that bacteria from Firmicutes were predominant along with those from Clostridia and Negativicutes, whereas bacteria from Verrucomicrobia, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Elusimicrobia were less abundant among the obese T2DM patients. These data distinctively vary from those in reports on the Indian population. The difference in gut microbiota could presumably be related to the distinct lifestyle and eastern dietary habits (high carbohydrate and fat intake, low fiber intake) and unregulated antibiotic consumption. This is the first study carried out to understand the gut microbiome and its correlation with individual life style of obese T2DM patients in the Pakistani population.

Point-of-care (POC) or near-patient testing allows clinicians to accurately achieve real-time diagnostic results performed at or near to the patient site. The outlook of POC devices is to provide quicker analyses that can lead to well-informed clinical decisions and hence improve the health of patients at the point-of-need. Microfluidics plays an important role in the development of POC devices. However, requirements of handling expertise, pumping systems and complex fluidic controls make the technology unaffordable to the current healthcare systems in the world. In recent years, capillary-driven flow microfluidics has emerged as an attractive microfluidic-based technology to overcome these limitations by offering robust, cost-effective and simple-to-operate devices. The internal wall of the microchannels can be pre-coated with reagents, and by merely dipping the device into the patient sample, the sample can be loaded into the microchannel driven by capillary forces and can be detected via handheld or smartphone-based detectors. The capabilities of capillary-driven flow devices have not been fully exploited in developing POC diagnostics, especially for antimicrobial resistance studies in clinical settings. The purpose of this review is to open up this field of microfluidics to the ever-expanding microfluidic-based scientific community.

Infectious diseases alone are estimated to result in approximately 40% of the 50 million total annual deaths globally. The importance of basic research in the control of emerging and re-emerging diseases cannot be overemphasized. However, new nanotechnology-based methodologies exploiting unique surface-located glycoproteins or their patterns can be exploited to detect pathogens at the point of use or on-site with high specificity and sensitivity. These technologies will, therefore, affect our ability in the future to more accurately assess risk. The critical challenge is making these new methodologies cost-effective, as well as simple to use, for the diagnostics industry and public healthcare providers. Miniaturization of biochemical assays in lab-on-a-chip devices has emerged as a promising tool. Miniaturization has the potential to shape modern biotechnology and how point-of-care testing of infectious diseases will be performed by developing smart microdevices that require minute amounts of sample and reagents and are cost-effective, robust, and sensitive and specific. The current review provides a short overview of some of the futuristic approaches using simple molecular interactions between glycoproteins and glycoprotein-binding molecules for the efficient and rapid detection of various pathogens at the point of use, advancing the emerging field of glyconanodiagnostics.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (member of ESKAPE group) is predominantly responsible for emerging nosocomial infections and poses serious health concern due to ever-increasing drug resistance trends. The current study investigates the prevalence of such highly resistant P. aeruginosa in major hospital settings and further characterizes and compares them for genetic heterogeneity. Samples of patients (n=108) with wound infections, bacteremia and burn injuries from major hospitals of Rawalpindi and Islamabad during 2017 to 2018 were collected for the present study. The samples were processed in the COMSATS Microbiology and Public Health lab and screened for the P. aeruginosa by routinely used biochemical tests, drug susceptibility tests and rapid molecular approaches. The results suggested that most of the isolates (88/108) are indeed P. aeruginosa (81.4%) underpinning the need of its active surveillance in hospital settings. Further analysis suggested that 32 of these 88 microbes are multi-drug resistance (36.3%), 16 (18.1%) are extensively drug resistance and 4 (4.5%) are pan-drug resistance. Moreover, double disc synergistic test suggested that 16 (18.1%) are positive for metallo-β-lactamase production. Molecular screening confirmed that 2 (12.5%) and 3 (18.75%) of these 16 isolates are positive for VIM and NDM gene respectively while all the studied isolates were positive for AmpC β-lactamase. PAP17 isolate harbors both VIM and NDM genes. ERIC PCR profiling showed that majority of MDR bacteria fall in cluster II and III similarly XDR bacteria also fall in cluster II and III while PDR bacteria fall in cluster IV. This study revealed that majority of the isolates are multi drug resistant MDR and extensively drug resistant (XDR). However, the presence of some pan drug resistant (PDR) isolates among such small sample size screened is of utmost concern. Molecular typing of extremely resistant P. aeruginosa revealed high genetic diversity. Therefore, we suggest that regular monitoring and surveillance of such highly resistant P. aeruginosa in hospital settings will help to control their transmission and hence reduce the disease burden.