Sepsis Pathogen Identification

Sepsis is a rapidly progressing, severe inflammatory response to infection, causing more than 200000 deaths per year. Rapid, specific pathogen identification is important to guide sepsis treatment. In this review, we describe and compare currently available commercial products for sepsis diagnosis and pathogen identification, based on microbiological, molecular, and mass spectrometric technologies. Microbiological techniques, the current gold standard in sepsis pathogen identification, include blood culture followed by subculturing and pathogen identification via biochemical or microscopic means. These methods have been automated but nevertheless require several days to generate results. Alternative technologies, including highly multiplexed PCR-based methods and mass spectrometric approaches, can decrease the required turnaround time. Matrix-assisted laser-desorption ionization time-of-flight-based systems have recently become an attractive option to rapidly identify a broad spectrum of sepsis pathogens with good sensitivity and specificity. Effectively integrating rapid sepsis pathogen identification into the hospital workflow can improve patient outcomes and can reduce the length of hospitalization and cost per patient.