Page 1 Rapid Sensor Based Technology: A Novel Tool for Direct Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing in Urinary Tract Infection Suman Kapur, Shivani Gupta, Padmavathi DV, Anuradha Pal, Jitendra Pant, Rashi Jain Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS Pilani), Hyderabad campus, Jawahar Nagar, Shameerpet Mandal, R.R District, Hyderabad- 500078, India Corresponding author: Suman Kapur Abstract Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is the second most common infectious disease in humans. Increasing antimicrobial resistance emphasizes the urgent need for quick and reliable diagnostic tests for evidence based antibiotic use/therapy. Increasing trend in resistance to common antibiotics used for treatment of UTI due to polymicrobial infection as opposed to monomicrobial infection makes it important to reconsider the standard diagnostic procedure. All the available automated and manual systems for direct susceptibility testing of microbial culture have the limitation of prolonged incubation time. The present study describes a newly developed device for rapid and direct antibiotic sensitivity testing of uropathogens in 3 hours as against the usual duration of 48-72 hours. Keywords: Urinary tract infection, Polymicrobial, antibiotic resistance diagnostics. Background Infectious diseases are a significant burden on global economies and a major public health threat. The fight against bacterial infections represents one of the key challenges of modern medicine. UTI, the second most common infectious disease [1] , is almost exclusively caused by bacteria. Most of the UTI cases are caused by Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis), while Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae), Pseudomonas sp. accounts for the remaining cases [2] . Antibiotics are the mainstay of treatment of diseases caused by bacterial infection [3]. A short course of antibiotic usually cures uncomplicated infections caused by a single type of bacteria. But unfortunately, most bacteria have developed resistance to commonly available antibiotics, leading to ineffective treatment and disease severity [4]. A clinical microbiology laboratory usually doesn’t report more than one microorganisms present in mixed culture from patient urine samples. As a http://oiirj.org/oiirj/tmb ISSN 2321-8509 Page 22 T ranslational M edicine and B iotechnology │ Volume 2 │ Issue 1 │ 2014