Novel fast pathogen diagnosis method for severe pneumonia patients in the intensive care unit: randomized clinical trial
- Nanjing University, China
- Nanjing Medical University, China
Abstract
Background:
Severe pneumonia is one of the common acute diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria infection, especially by pathogenic bacteria, leading to sepsis with a high morbidity and mortality rate. However, the existing bacteria cultivation method cannot satisfy current clinical needs requiring rapid identification of bacteria strain for antibiotic selection. Therefore, developing a sensitive liquid biopsy system demonstrates the enormous value of detecting pathogenic bacterium species in pneumonia patients.
Methods:
In this study, we developed a tool named Species-Specific Bacterial Detector (SSBD, pronounce as "speed") for detecting selected bacterium. Newly designed diagnostic tools combining specific DNA-tag screened by our algorithm and CRISPR/Cas12a, which were first tested in the lab to confirm the accuracy, followed by validating its specificity and sensitivity via applying on bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from pneumonia patients. In the validation I stage, we compared the SSBD results with traditional cultivation results. In the validation II stage, a randomized and controlled clinical trial was completed at the ICU of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital to evaluate the benefit SSBD brought to the treatment.
Results:
In the validation stage I, 77 BALF samples were tested, and SSBD could identify designated organisms in 4 hours with almost 100% sensitivity and over 87% specific rate. In validation stage II, the SSBD results were obtained in 4 hours, leading to better APACHE II scores (p=0.0035, ANOVA test). Based on the results acquired by SSBD, cultivation results could deviate from the real pathogenic situation with polymicrobial infections. In addition, nosocomial infections were found widely in ICU, which should deserve more attention.
Funding:
National Natural Science Foundation of China. The National Key Scientific Instrument and Equipment Development Project. Project number: 81927808.
Clinical trial:
This study was registered at ClinicalTrilas.gov (NCT04178382).
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file; Source Data files have been provided for Figures 3-5, Appendix figures 2-5, and Appendix tables 3-9.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (The National Key Scientific Instrument and Equipment Development Project,81927808)
- Wenkui Yu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: We acquired the ethics approval (2019-197-01) from the ethics committee of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing University Medical School in July 2019, registered and posted the complete research protocol, informed consent, subject materials, case report form, researcher manual, the introduction of main researchers and other information in Chinese. Later on, this study was registered in English at ClinicalTrilas.gov (NCT04178382) in November 2019.
Reviewing Editor
- Bavesh D Kana, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Publication history
- Preprint posted: March 25, 2022 (view preprint)
- Received: March 28, 2022
- Accepted: October 5, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 7, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 26, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2022, Wang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Novel fast pathogen diagnosis method for severe pneumonia patients in the intensive care unit: randomized clinical trial
eLife 11:e79014.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79014
Further reading
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Background: Viral infection is associated with a significant rewire of the host metabolic pathways, presenting attractive metabolic targets for intervention.
Methods: We chart the metabolic response of lung epithelial cells to SARS-CoV-2 infection in primary cultures and COVID-19 patient samples and perform in vitro metabolism-focused drug screen on primary lung epithelial cells infected with different strains of the virus. We perform observational analysis of Israeli patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 and comparative epidemiological analysis from cohorts in Italy and the Veteran's Health Administration in the United States. In addition, we perform a prospective non-randomized interventional open-label study in which 15 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 were given 145 mg/day of nanocrystallized fenofibrate added to the standard of care.
Results: SARS-CoV-2 infection produced transcriptional changes associated with increased glycolysis and lipid accumulation. Metabolism-focused drug screen showed that fenofibrate reversed lipid accumulation and blocked SARS-CoV-2 replication through a PPARa-dependent mechanism in both alpha and delta variants. Analysis of 3,233 Israeli patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 supported in vitro findings. Patients taking fibrates showed significantly lower markers of immunoinflammation and faster recovery. Additional corroboration was received by comparative epidemiological analysis from cohorts in Europe and the United States. A subsequent prospective non-randomized interventional open-label study was carried out on 15 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19. The patients were treated with 145 mg/day of nanocrystallized fenofibrate in addition to standard-of-care. Patients receiving fenofibrate demonstrated a rapid reduction in inflammation and a significantly faster recovery compared to patients admitted during the same period.
Conclusions: Taken together, our data suggest that pharmacological modulation of PPARa should be strongly considered as a potential therapeutic approach for SARS-CoV-2 infection and emphasizes the need to complete the study of fenofibrate in large randomized controlled clinical trials.
Funding: Funding was provided by European Research Council Consolidator Grants OCLD (project no. 681870) and generous gifts from the Nikoh Foundation and the Sam and Rina Frankel Foundation (YN). The interventional study was supported by Abbott (project FENOC0003).
Clinical trial number: NCT04661930.
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