A novel method for urinary tract infection diagnosis and antibiogram using Raman spectroscopy

Urinary tract infection (UTI) diagnosis and antibiogram require a 48-h waiting period using the standard conventional clinical methods. This long waiting period results in ineffective treatments, increased costs and, most importantly, in increased resistance to antibiotics. In this work, a novel method for classifying bacteria and determining their sensitivity to an antibiotic using Raman spectroscopy is described. Raman spectra belonging to three species of gram-negative enterobacteria, which are most commonly responsible for UTIs, are classified with over 94% accuracy using novel feature extraction and discriminant analysis. Sensitivity to ciprofloxacin is also clearly evident as early as 2 h after treatment by differences in the Raman spectra of bacteria treated or not treated with this antibiotic. The proposed technique can become the basis for the development of new technology for UTI diagnosis and antibiogram with same day results, thus avoiding urine cultures and all undesirable consequences of current practice. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.