Phage based diagnosis of bacterial infections

Abstract

Accurate diagnosis and proper treatment of infectious diseases in the early stages are essential in preventing financial losses and patient suffering. Advanced diagnostic tests e.g. ELISA, CFT, PCR etc. are very costly, cumbersome, require sophisticated equipment and skilled personnel and cannot be employed at field level. Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically infect bacteria, replicate in it and lyse it. Lysis of the bacteria can be detected by using suitable indicator system. By employing bacteriophages along with indicator systems, accurate, easy and cost effective diagnosis of bacterial pathogens is possible in field conditions. Phage based diagnostic methods are cheap, simple and highly specific for bacterial diseases and are of bedside and penside applicability. Phage based diagnostics employing phage amplification and phage plaque method, reporter genes for luminescence, Fluorescence assays, MTT assay, Adenylate Kinase assay and ATP assay have been described here.