miacom diagnostics announces new tests for faster diagnosis of sepsis

Apr 29 2010

miacom diagnostics GmbH specializes on medical tests for the detection of pathogens causing infections. The company, which is headquartered in Duesseldorf, Germany, was founded in 2006 with the vision to develop faster and better diagnostic tools than up to now available to health professionals. This vision is based on the insight that the speed and precision of a test result in everyday clinical practice can often make the difference in saving a patient's life. With the lucesco^® Bacteremia I and II IVD panels and the lucesco^® Bacteremia S. aureus screen miacom diagnostics has developed three innovative products that will produce identification results within just 30 minutes.

Sepsis, after cardiovascular diseases and cancer, is the third most frequent cause of death in Germany. Sepsis can result from basically any kind of infection. Every year sepsis is diagnosed in approx. 154,000 people. 60,000 patients die as a consequence of the disease. Even small routine surgeries may often lead to a tragic sepsis outcome. In addition, treatment of sepsis patients may often cause enormous health insurance costs: 1.7 billion EUR are spent each year in sepsis patient intensive care. Every second counts in the diagnosis of sepsis. Whenever pathogens, like bacteria, fungi, or viruses proliferate in the blood it is a race against time. For every hour without proper antibiotic treatment will increase a patient's risk of dying by seven percent.

"Conventional PCR tests (PCR is short for polymerase chain reaction, a highly sensitive method of detecting nucleic acids) require several hours to produce a result. lucesco Bacteremia IVD panels are not only much faster with a result after only 30 minutes, they are also much more cost-efficient. Cost for the parallel identification of up to 14 gram-positive or gram-negative bacteria with approx. 30 EUR per patient is the same as for products that require one to four days for the same results. Detection of an individual sepsis pathogen, e.g. Staphylococcus aureus, with our technology is possible for as little as 10 EUR per patient", says Dr. Mirko Stange, Managing Director of miacom diagnostics GmbH. A lucesco IVD test takes only 10 minutes hands-on time and involves just five simple process steps. The result features highest molecular diagnostic method precision.