An assay currently under development, can detect the most medically relevant Candida species within an hour from blood cultures taken from patients with fungal bloodstream infections (BSI), speeding diagnosis and appropriate treatment for better patient outcomes.

Candidemia constitutes the fourth leading cause of hospital acquired BSI in the United States. Immunocompromised patients, including transplant, HIV-infected, and chemotherapy patients, are at particularly high risk of fungal infections.

Great Basin Corporation (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) a privately-held molecular diagnostics company developing sample-to-result solutions, presented initial data of its Candida assay during the Clinical Mycology--Diagnosis, Treatment and Epidemiology session at the American Society of Microbiology General Meeting in San Francisco (CA, USA), which took place from June 16–19, 2012.

Great Basin Corporation is dedicated to developing simple yet powerful point-of-care technology and products that improve automation, throughput, scalability, reliability, and ease-of-use in rapid diagnostic testing. The technology entails an integrated disposable cartridge containing all necessary reagents and an inexpensive bench-top analyzer that executes the assay, interprets the results, and provides electronic output to the clinician.

Providing greater scalability of content, the technology will enable health providers to diagnose infectious disease and define a clear treatment path sooner for improved patient outcomes, shorter hospital stays, and dollars saved in hospitalization costs per patient. This next-generation technology will ultimately limit the spread of deadly hospital-acquired microorganisms by delivering accuracy to diagnosis, significantly reducing medication errors, false positives, and antibiotic drug resistance.

In May, 2012 Great Basin received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA; Silver Spring, MD, USA) for its first molecular diagnostic test, which detects Clostridium difficile, one of the most common and deadly hospital-acquired infections. The company also released this assay as a European CE-IVD product.

Related Links:
Great Basin Corporation
US Food and Drug Administration