Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy as a tool for rapid and inexpensive diagnosis and antibiotic susceptibility testing for urinary tract infections

Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) are some of the most common bacterial diseases, especially in women, resulting in millions of hospital visits and a cost of 1.6 billion dollars every year in the US alone. Currently, diagnosis is performed with two sequential urine cultures, for species identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing, which require a total of 48 hrs. The limitations of the current scheme can be overcome by the development of a Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) based diagnostic. The proposed technology can: (i) identify the presence of bacteria (correctly quantifies the concentration and specifies the bacteurimic samples), (ii) classify the causative bacteria (~94% correct classification), and (iii) determine the sensitivity of the bacteria to various antibiotics (81-100% correct classification depending on the antibiotic). These results demonstrate that SERS can be used for complete, fast, accurate, and inexpensive POCT for urinary tract and other bacterial infections.