Sniffing Out Sepsis
December 17, 2013 | Terry Sharrer
Blood poisoning kills a quarter of a million people each year in the US and costs more than $20 billion in treatments. Early and accurate detection saves lives and money; and to that end researchers at Taiwan’s National University of Kaohsiung have developed a quick and easy diagnostic tool that can identify eight of the most common pathogens with 99% accuracy. It does so by odor detection. Inside a plastic bottle, a chemical sensing array has 36 pigment dots that change color when they detect a specific bacterial odor in a blood specimen. The test gives results in 24 hours. MORE