New rapid test tells difference between bacterial and viral infections

 Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a rapid and accurate test to tell the difference between bacterial and viral infections. Those common afflictions often have similar symptoms but vastly different treatments — antibiotics work for bacterial infections but not for viruses. The report appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry.

Robert Marks, Daria Prilutsky, and colleagues cite the importance of determining the source of an infection in order to quickly start the right treatment. If left untreated until results of a throat culture, for instance, are in, bacterial infections can get worse. But needlessly giving antibiotics to patients with a viral infection could contribute to the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since current diagnostic methods to sort out the two kinds of infection are time-consuming and may not be completely accurate, the researchers sought to develop a new test that would enable doctors to rapidly make the right diagnosis.

They found that the immune systems of patients with bacterial infections behaved differently than the immune systems of patients with viral infections, and developed a test based on those differences. "The method is time-saving, easy to perform and can be commercially available, thus, having predictive diagnostic value and could be implemented in various medical institutions as an adjunct to clinical decision making," say the researchers.

More information: “Differentiation between viral and bacterial acute infections using chemiluminescent signatures of circulating phagocytes” Anal. Chem., 2011, 83 (11), pp 4258–4265 DOI: 10.1021/ac200596f

Abstract
Oftentimes the etiological diagnostic differentiation between viral and bacterial infections is problematic, while clinical management decisions need to be made promptly upon admission. Thus, alternative rapid and sensitive diagnostic approaches need to be developed. Polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) or phagocytes act as major players in the defense response of the host during an episode of infection, and thereby undergo functional changes that differ according to the infections. PMNs functional activity can be characterized by quantification and localization of respiratory burst production and assessed by chemiluminescent (CL) byproduct reaction. We have assessed the functional states of PMNs of patients with acute infections in a luminol-amplified whole blood system using the component CL approach. In this study, blood was drawn from 69 patients with fever (>38 °C), and diagnosed as mainly viral or bacterial infections in origin. Data mining algorithms (C4.5, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Nave Bayes) were used to induce classification models to distinguish between clinical groups. The model with the best predictive accuracy was induced using C4.5 algorithm, resulting in 94.7% accuracy on the training set and 88.9% accuracy on the testing set. The method demonstrated a high predictive diagnostic value and may assist the clinician one day in the distinction between viral and bacterial infections and the choice of proper medication.

Provided by American Chemical Society (news : web)

Tail hair tells tale of cattle`s diet -- Scientists trace grassland production

 Tail hair can show if cattle have been grass-fed or not, according to scientists. By chemically analysing the tail hair, it is also possible for scientists to tell if, and when, a grass diet has been substituted for other types of feed over the past 12 months.

The findings published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry show a clear scientific traceability and verification of grassland production.

“We can no longer depend on paperwork alone to trace production methods or feeds given to farm animals,” says Professor Frank Monahan from the UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science, and Veterinary Medicine at University College Dublin, and the UCD Institute of Food and Health, the first author of the scientific study.

“A tail hair of approximately 30 centimetres in length contains over a year’s information on the animal’s diet, with the hair closest to the skin holding clues to the most recent diet,” he explains.

“By plucking a hair from the tail, cutting it into millimetre segments, and analysing these in sequence we can get information about the diet over the previous days, weeks and months and, importantly, when the diet was changed,” explains Professor Monahan.

The method involves combusting the tail hair and measuring the isotopes of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur emitted.

Following the analysis, the scientists can almost identify the precise day when the grass diet of the animal may have been substituted with cereal or concentrate.

According to the scientists, omega 3 fatty acids are significantly higher in grass-fed beef than they are in cereal-fed beef.  As a result, beef from grass-fed cattle is often labelled and marketed on the basis of having high levels of omega 3 fatty acids and CLA (which together have been linked to several health benefits in humans).

“Consumers are increasingly interested in the origin and authenticity of the food they consume. So there is a clear need for reliable methods to verify the dietary history of farm animals,” says Dr. Aidan Moloney from the Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre at Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority, who co-authored the study.

In the US food labels identifying if a farm animal has been ‘grass-fed’ allows for a premium to be charged for the product.

The scientists believe that a similar labelling could help the Irish beef industry to introduce a premium for its products.

The research was funded by the Irish Government’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

In 2006, US scientists used a similar method of chemically analysing tail hair to track the movement of elephants in Kenya. The aim was to help conservationists decide where to locate Elephant sanctuaries. The analysis showed that some elephants in the sanctuaries had raided nearby crop fields for food, a cause for concern among the local populations.

More information: 'Beef authentication and retrospective dietary verification using stable isotope ratio analysis of bovine muscle and tail hair.' Osorio, M.T, et al. (2011) Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 59 (7), pp 3295–3305

Provided by University College Dublin