A novel biosensing strategy for identification of three important bacteria causing meningitis.

Bacterial meningitis is an acute infection which requires rapid diagnosis and treatment due to the high mortality and serious consequences of the disease. The purpose of this study was to design a homemade multiplex PCR and a novel fluorescence biosensor on chip (FBC) to detect three important agents of meningitis including Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae), Neisseria meningitidis (N. meningitidis), and Haemophilus influenzae (H. influenzae). The homemade multiplex PCR can diagnose three bacterial species simultaneously. Fabrication of FBC was carried out based on the deposition of lead nanoparticles on a quartz slide using the thermal evaporation method. Then, the SH-Cap Probe/Target ssDNA /FAM-Rep probe was loaded on lead film. The evaluation of the fluorescence reaction when the probes bind to the target ssDNA was assessed by a Cytation 5 Cell Imaging Multimode Reader Bio-Tek. The limit of detections (LOD) in homemade PCR and FBC to identify S. pneumoniae were 119 × 10 ²  CFU/mL (0.27 ng/μL) and 380 CFU/mL (9 pg/μL), respectively. The LODs of homemade PCR and FBC for detection of N. meningitidis were 4.49 CFU/mL (1.1 pg/μL) and 13 × 10 ³  CFU/mL (30 pg/μL), respectively. Our results confirmed the LODs of homemade PCR and FBC in detection of H. influenzae were 15.1 CFU/mL (30 fg/μL) and 41 × 10 ²  CFU/mL (90 pg/ μL), respectively. Both techniques had appropriate sensitivity and specificity in detection of S. pneumoniae, N. meningitidis and H. influenzae.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)