1. Beating the Bio-Terror Threat with Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing
- Author
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Ofir Israeli, Ronit Aloni-Grinstein, Shahar Rotem, Ida Steinberger-Levy, and Eran Zahavy
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Microbiology (medical) ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Yersinia pestis ,medicine.drug_class ,QH301-705.5 ,030106 microbiology ,Antibiotics ,Antimicrobial susceptibility ,Review ,medicine.disease_cause ,Microbiology ,high throughput sequencing ,03 medical and health sciences ,Antibiotic resistance ,blood cultures ,Virology ,antibiotic ,environmental samples ,medicine ,Bacterial agent ,Psychological stress ,genotypic tests ,Biology (General) ,Francisella tularensis ,Intensive care medicine ,Bacillus anthracis ,Additional concerns ,business.industry ,clinical samples ,Antimicrobial ,030104 developmental biology ,Preparedness ,phenotypic tests ,business ,bioterror - Abstract
A bioterror event using an infectious bacterium may lead to catastrophic outcomes involving morbidity and mortality as well as social and psychological stress. Moreover, a bioterror event using an antibiotic resistance engineered bacterial agent may raise additional concerns. Thus, preparedness is essential to preclude and control the dissemination of the bacterial agent as well as to appropriately and promptly treat potentially exposed individuals or patients. Rates of morbidity, death, and social anxiety can be drastically reduced if the rapid delivery of antimicrobial agents for post-exposure prophylaxis and treatment is initiated as soon as possible. Availability of rapid antibiotic susceptibility tests that may provide key recommendations to targeted antibiotic treatment is mandatory, yet, such tests are only at the development stage. In this review, we describe the recently published rapid antibiotic susceptibility tests implemented on bioterror bacterial agents and discuss their assimilation in clinical and environmental samples.
- Published
- 2021