University of Cambridge researchers have developed a DNA test to quickly identify secondary infections in COVID-19 patients who have double the risk of developing pneumonia while on ventilation than non-COVID-19 patients.
"Early on in the pandemic we noticed that COVID-19 patients appeared to be particularly at risk of developing secondary pneumonia, and started using a rapid diagnostic test that we had developed for just such a situation," said Andrew Conway Morris, senior author of a paper published earlier this week in Critical Care. "Using this test, we found that patients with COVID-19 were twice as likely to develop secondary pneumonia as other patients in the same intensive care unit."
The test runs multiple PCR reactions in parallel, and can simultaneously pick up 52 different pathogens, which often infect the lungs of patients in intensive care. At the same time, it can also test for antibiotic resistance.