Scientists in the region are being asked to develop a revolutionary bug detector which could help the NHS win the fight against hospital-acquired infections. Health Editor Barry Nelson reports.

ONE of the biggest priorities in the National Health Service in the past 12 months has been driving down hospital infection rates.

While hospitals in the North-East and North Yorkshire do better than the average when it comes to getting hospital-acquired infections under control, it is still a significant problem.

That is why the Government is desperate to find new ways of reducing the number of cases of infections such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus).

The bacteria which cause MRSA are carried by a significant proportion of the population but only become a health hazard in a hospital environment.

Becoming infected with MRSA after you have had an operation can delay your recovery and lead to very unpleasant and potentially dangerous symptoms. In extreme cases, it can even contribute towards postoperative mortality.

Increasingly, patients are being checked to see if they are MRSA-positive before being admitted for operations.

But the process of taking a swab, sending it off to a pathology lab and then waiting 24 hours to see what cultures can be grown from the sample simply takes too long.

What the NHS would really like is a gadget which would tell nurses that Patient A has MRSA within minutes rather than days. Ideally, this gadget could be used to check patients in their own homes, in care homes or in doctor’s surgeries before they are admitted to a busy hospital.

This way, patients who are carrying MRSA can be given medication to clear up the infection before they even get to the hospital.

Recent advances in technology mean that such a highly useful gizmo is now a distinct possibility. In fact, scientists at Newcastle University have just been awarded £2m to try to develop a portable, hand-held device which could be used to check patients for MRSA before admission.

THE multi-disciplined research team is led by Professor Calum McNeil, from Newcastle University’s Institute of Cellular Medicine, who says: “This sensor should quickly and easily identify people who are carrying these unwanted bacteria so that they can be given treatment before they are admitted to hospital. By doing this, we could stop the infection before it even enters the hospital.

“Such potentially inexpensive devices could revolutionise screening procedures,” he says.

The idea is that the health professional, nurse or doctor, would take a swab from the patient which the sensor could analyse in about 15 minutes.

This would mean a positive reading for MRSA – or other hospital- acquired bugs such as Clostridium difficile – would allow treatment with antibiotics to begin immediately.

The “bug detector” would be the product of molecular, nano and micro scale engineering. The aim is to produce a device which can detect and positively identify specific disease-causing bacteria, based on distinctive “fingerprints” of proteins exposed at the surface of cells.

Prof McNeil says swabs will still need to be taken from the patient, probably from their mouth or nose, before being combined with a liquid to produce a readable sample.

The project involves a whole range of specialist disciplines working closely together, including mechanical engineers, computer scientists, microbiologists, protein chemists and many more.

The Newcastle University research team involves Professor Colin Harwood and Dr Philip Manning, from the Faculty of Medical Sciences, and Professor Anil Wipat, Dr John Hedley and Dr Barry Gallagher from the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, as well as the regional Health Protection Agency Laboratory in Newcastle and a small company, Aptuscan Ltd, have received a £2m grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop the system.

“It is going to be a bit like The Apprentice.

We have got three years of funding and at the end of that period they will chose which project looks the most likely to produce a practical product,” says Prof McNeil.

The Newcastle scientists are one of ten teams to receive part of £15.5m in research grants awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to help solve some of the biggest health problems facing the UK.