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New Federal Rules on Sepsis Treatment Could Cost Hospitals Millions of Dollars in Medicare Reimbursements

Some hospital organizations are pushing back, stating that the new regulations are ‘too rigid’ and interfere with doctors’ treatment of patients

In August, the Biden administration finalized provisions for hospitals to meet specific treatment metrics for all patients with suspected sepsis. Hospitals that fail to meet these requirements risk the potential loss of millions of dollars in Medicare reimbursements annually. This new federal rule did not go over well with some in the hospital industry.

Sepsis kills about 350,000 people every year. One in three people who contract the deadly blood infection in hospitals die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Thus, the federal government has once again implemented a final rule that requires hospitals, clinical laboratories, and medical providers to take immediate actions to diagnose and treat sepsis patients.

The effort has elicited pushback from several healthcare organizations that say the measure is “too rigid” and “does not allow clinicians flexibility to determine how recommendations should apply to their specific patients,” according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

The quality measures are known as the Severe Sepsis/Septic Shock Early Management Bundle (SEP-1). The regulation compels doctors and clinical laboratories to:

  • Perform blood tests within a specific period of time to look for biomarkers in patients that may indicate sepsis, and to
  • Administer antibiotics within three hours after a possible case is identified.

It also mandates that certain other tests are performed, and intravenous fluids administered, to prevent blood pressure from dipping to dangerously low levels. 

“These are core things that everyone should do every time they see a septic patient,” said Steven Simpson, MD, Professor of medicine at the University of Kansas told Fierce Healthcare. Simpson is also the chairman of the Sepsis Alliance, an advocacy group that works to battle sepsis. 

Simpson believes there is enough evidence to prove that the SEP-1 guidelines result in improved patient care and outcomes and should be enforced.

“It is quite clear that this works better than what was present before, which was nothing,” he said. “If the current sepsis mortality rate could be cut by even 5%, we could save a lot of lives. Before, even if you were reporting 0% compliance, you didn’t lose your money. Now you actually have to do it,” Simpson noted.

Chanu Rhee, MD

“We are encouraged by the increased attention to sepsis and support CMS’ creation of a sepsis mortality measure that will encourage hospitals to pay more attention to the full breadth of sepsis care,” Chanu Rhee, MD (above), Infectious Disease/Critical Care Physician and Associate Hospital Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital told Healthcare Finance. The new rule, however, requires doctors and medical laboratories to conduct tests and administer antibiotic treatment sooner than many healthcare providers deem wise. (Photo copyright: Brigham and Women’s Hospital.)

Healthcare Organizations Pushback against Final Rule

The recent final rule builds on previous federal efforts to combat sepsis. In 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) first began attempting to reduce sepsis deaths with the implementation of SEP-1. That final rule updated the Medicare payment policies and rates under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Care Hospitals Prospective Payment System (LTCH PPS).

Even then the rule elicited a response from the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM). The organizations were concerned that the measure “encourages the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics,” according to a letter the AHA sent to then Acting Administrator of CMS Andrew Slavitt.

“By encouraging the use of broad spectrum antibiotics when more targeted ones will suffice, this measure promotes the overuse of the antibiotics that are our last line of defense against drug-resistant bacteria,” the AHA’s letter states.

In its recent coverage of the healthcare organizations’ pushback to CMS’ final rule, Healthcare Finance News explained, “The SEP-1 measure requires clinicians to provide a bundle of care to all patients with possible sepsis within three hours of recognition. … But the SEP-1 measure doesn’t take into account that many serious conditions present in a similar fashion to sepsis … Pushing clinicians to treat all these patients as if they have sepsis … leads to overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which can be harmful to patients who are not infected, those who are infected with viruses rather than bacteria, and those who could safely be treated with narrower-spectrum antibiotics.”

CMS’ latest rule follows the same evolutionary path as previous federal guidelines. In August 2007, CMS announced that Medicare would no longer pay for additional costs associated with preventable errors, including situations known as Never Events. These are “adverse events that are serious, largely preventable, and of concern to both the public and healthcare providers for the purpose of public accountability,” according to the Leapfrog Group.

In 2014, the CDC suggested that all US hospitals have an antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) to measure and improve how antibiotics are prescribed by clinicians and utilized by patients.

Research Does Not Show Federal Sepsis Programs Work

In a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) titled, “The Importance of Shifting Sepsis Quality Measures from Processes to Outcomes,” Chanu Rhee, MD, Infectious Disease/Critical Care Physician and Associate Hospital Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School, stressed his concerns about the new regulations.

He points to analysis which showed that though use of broad-spectrum antibiotics increased after the original 2015 SEP-1 regulations were introduced, there has been little change to patient outcomes.  

“Unfortunately, we do not have good evidence that implementation of the sepsis policy has led to an improvement in sepsis mortality rates,” Rhee told Fierce Healthcare.

Rhee believes that the latest regulations are a step in the right direction, but that more needs to be done for sepsis care. “Retiring past measures and refining future ones will help stimulate new innovations in diagnosis and treatment and ultimately improve outcomes for the many patients affected by sepsis,” he told Healthcare Finance.

Sepsis is very difficult to diagnose quickly and accurately. Delaying treatment could result in serious consequences. But clinical laboratory blood tests for blood infections can take up to three days to produce a result. During that time, a patient could be receiving the wrong antibiotic for the infection, which could lead to worse problems.

The new federal regulation is designed to ensure that patients receive the best care possible when dealing with sepsis and to lower mortality rates in those patients. It remains to be seen if it will have the desired effect.  

Jillia Schlingman

Related Information:

Feds Hope to Cut Sepsis Deaths by Hitching Medicare Payments to Treatment Stats

Healthcare Associations Push Back on CMS’ Sepsis Rule, Advocate Tweaks

Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) and SEP-1: What You Should Know

NIGMS: Sepsis Fact Sheet

CDC: What is Sepsis?

CDC: Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship

The Importance of Shifting Sepsis Quality Measures from Processes to Outcomes

Association Between Implementation of the Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock Early Management Bundle Performance Measure and Outcomes in Patients with Suspected Sepsis in US Hospitals

Infectious Diseases Society of America Position Paper: Recommended Revisions to the National Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock Early Management Bundle (SEP-1) Sepsis Quality Measure

CMS to Improve Quality of Care during Hospital Inpatient Stays – 2014

Separate Reports Shed Light on Why CDC SARS-CoV-2 Test Kits Failed During Start of COVID-19 Pandemic

HHS Office of Inspector General was the latest to examine the quality control problems that led to distribution of inaccurate test to clinical laboratories nationwide

Failure on the part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to produce accurate, dependable SARS-CoV-2 clinical laboratory test kits at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to draw scrutiny and criticism of the actions taken by the federal agency.

In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC distributed faulty SARS-CoV-2 test kits to public health laboratories (PHLs), delaying the response to the outbreak at a critical juncture. That failure was widely publicized at the time. But within the past year, two reports have provided a more detailed look at the shortcomings that led to the snafu.

The most recent assessment came in an October 2023 report from the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG), following an audit of the public health agency. The report was titled, “CDC’s Internal Control Weaknesses Led to Its Initial COVID-19 Test Kit Failure, but CDC Ultimately Created a Working Test Kit.”

“We identified weaknesses in CDC’s COVID-19 test kit development processes and the agencywide laboratory quality processes that may have contributed to the failure of the initial COVID-19 test kits,” the OIG stated in its report.

Prior to the outbreak, the agency had internal documents that were supposed to provide guidance for how to respond to public health emergencies. However, “these documents do not address the development of a test kit,” the OIG stated.

Jill Taylor, PhD

“If the CDC can’t change, [its] importance in health in the nation will decline,” said microbiologist Jill Taylor, PhD (above), Senior Adviser for the Association of Public Health Laboratories in Washington, DC. “The coordination of public health emergency responses in the nation will be worse off.” Clinical laboratories that were blocked from developing their own SARS-CoV-2 test during the pandemic would certainly agree. (Photo copyright: Columbia University.)

Problems at the CDC’s RVD Lab

Much of the OIG’s report focused on the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Diagnostic (RVD) lab which was part of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). The RVD lab had primary responsibility for developing, producing, and distributing the test kits. Because it was focused on research, it “was not set up to develop and manufacture test kits and therefore had no policies and procedures for developing and manufacturing test kits,” the report stated.

The RVD lab also lacked the staff and funding to handle test kit development in a public health emergency, the report stated. As a result, “the lead scientist not only managed but also participated in all test kit development processes,” the report stated. “In addition, when the initial test kit failed at some PHLs, the lead scientist was also responsible for troubleshooting and correcting the problem.”

To verify the test kit, the RVD lab needed samples of viral material from the agency’s Biotechnology Core Facility Branch (BCFB) CORE Lab, which also manufactured reagents for the kit.

“RVD Lab, which was under pressure to quickly create a test kit for the emerging health threat, insisted that CORE Lab deviate from its usual practices of segregating these two activities and fulfill orders for both reagents and viral material,” the report stated.

This increased the risk of contamination, the report said. An analysis by CDC scientists “did not determine whether a process error or contamination was at fault for the test kit failure; however, based on our interviews with CDC personnel, contamination could not be ruled out,” the report stated.

The report also cited the CDC’s lack of standardized systems for quality control and management of laboratory documents. Labs involved in test kit development used two different incompatible systems for tracking and managing documents, “resulting in staff being unable to distinguish between draft, obsolete, and current versions of laboratory procedures and forms.”

Outside Experts Weigh In

The OIG report followed an earlier review by the CDC’s Laboratory Workgroup (LW), which consists of 12 outside experts, including academics, clinical laboratory directors, state public health laboratory directors, and a science advisor from the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Members were appointed by the CDC Advisory Committee to the Director.

This group cited four major issues:

  • Lack of adequate planning: For the “rapid development, validation, manufacture, and distribution of a test for a novel pathogen.”
  • Ineffective governance: Three labs—the RVD Lab, CORE Lab, and Reagent and Diagnostic Services Branch—were involved in test kit development and manufacturing. “At no point, however, were these three laboratories brought together under unified leadership to develop the SARS-CoV-2 test,” the report stated.
  • Poor quality control and oversight: “Essentially, at the start of the pandemic, infectious disease clinical laboratories at CDC were not held to the same quality and regulatory standards that equivalent high-complexity public health, clinical and commercial reference laboratories in the United States are held,” the report stated.
  • Poor test design processes: The report noted that the test kit had three probes designed to bind to different parts of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid gene. The first two—N1 (topology) and N2 (intracellular localization)—were designed to match SARS-CoV-2 specifically, whereas the third—N3 (functions of the protein)—was designed to match all Sarbecoviruses, the family that includes SARS-CoV-2 as well as the coronavirus responsible for the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak.

The N1 probe was found to be contaminated, the group’s report stated, while the N3 probe was poorly designed. The report questioned the decision to include the N3 probe, which was not included in European tests.

Also lacking were “clearly defined pass/fail threshold criteria for test validation,” the report stated.

Advice to the CDC

Both reports made recommendations for changes at the CDC, but the LW’s were more far-reaching. For example, it advised the agency to establish a senior leader position “with major responsibility and authority for laboratories at the agency.” This individual would oversee a new Center that would “focus on clinical laboratory quality, laboratory safety, workforce training, readiness and response, and manufacturing.”

In addition, the CDC should consolidate its clinical diagnostic laboratories, the report advised, and “laboratories that follow a clinical quality management system should have separate technical staff and space from those that do not follow such a system, such as certain research laboratories.”

The report also called for collaboration with “high functioning public health laboratories, hospital and academic laboratories, and commercial reference laboratories.” For example, collaborating on test design and development “should eliminate the risk of a single point of failure for test design and validation,” the LW suggested.

CBS News reported in August that the CDC had already begun implementing some of the group’s suggestions, including agencywide quality standards and better coordination with state labs.

However, “recommendations for the agency to physically separate its clinical laboratories from its research laboratories, or to train researchers to uphold new quality standards, will be heavy lifts because they require continuous funding,” CBS News reported, citing an interview with Jim Pirkle, MD, PhD, Director, Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, at the CDC.

—Stephen Beale

Related Information:

CDC’s Internal Control Weaknesses Led to Its Initial COVID-19 Test Kit Failure, but CDC Ultimately Created a Working Test Kit  

Review of the Shortcomings of CDC’s First COVID-19 Test and Recommendations for the Policies, Practices, and Systems to Mitigate Future Issues      

Collaboration to Improve Emergency Laboratory Response: Open Letter from the Association of Pathology Chairs to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention    

The CDC Works to Overhaul Lab Operations after COVID Test Flop

University of Southern California Researchers Develop Vaccine That Boosts Immunity and Helps Patients Avoid Deadly Infections While in Hospitals

New vaccine could give clinical laboratories and antimicrobial stewardship programs the tool they need to dramatically reduce hospital-acquired infections

Healthcare providers and clinical laboratories continue to struggle against hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and ever-evolving antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria. But now, the University of Southern California (USC) has developed and patented an experimental vaccine that has been shown to protect against so-called “superbugs,” such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an AMR bacteria that causes potentially deadly staph infections in hospitals and other healthcare settings.

The innovative approach focuses on bolstering the patient’s immune system itself, rather than relying on proteins to fight infections, according to a USC Today article. 

Developed by senior study author Brad Spellberg, MD, Chief Medical Officer at the Los Angeles General Medical Center, and colleagues, “The experimental vaccine takes an entirely different approach: It gooses the body’s preexisting supply of pathogen-gobbling immune cells called macrophages, which engulf and digest bacteria, fungi, and other bad actors. These activated fighters, found in all tissues, quickly neutralize incoming invaders which might otherwise multiply rapidly and overwhelm the body’s defenses,” USC Today reported. 

“This is very different from developing new antibiotics,” Jun Yan, a doctoral student at Keck School of Medicine and the study’s first author, told USC Today. “This is using our own immune system to fight against different superbugs, which is a different approach than everybody else.”

To develop the vaccine [the USC researchers] formed a biotechnology startup called ExBaq LLC in Bethesda, Md.

They published their findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine title, “A Protein-Free Vaccine Stimulates Innate Immunity and Protects against Nosocomial Pathogens.”

Ishwar K. Puri, PhD

“The pandemic stimulated unprecedented innovation in vaccine development, where federal funding and university-industry partnerships were game changers for translating promising discoveries from academic labs for the good of all,” said Ishwar K. Puri, PhD (above), senior vice president of research and innovation at USC. “We are both pleased and proud of the critical support the USC Stevens Center provided to enable the development of ExBaq’s experimental vaccine that protects vulnerable populations from serious infections.” Clinical laboratories that work with hospitals in the fight against hospital-acquired infections understand the importance of this discovery. (Photo copyright: University of Southern California.)

USC Vaccine Details

The USC team developed a “protein-free vaccine, composed of aluminum hydroxide, monophosphoryl lipid A, and fungal mannan, that stimulates the innate immune system and confers protection,” the researchers wrote in Science Translational Medicine.

“Tested in two independent labs, the vaccine works within 24 hours and lasts for up to 28 days. In lab models, the number of pathogen-eating immune cells in the blood increased dramatically, and survival time of invasive blood and lung infections improved. Early data suggest that a second dose could extend the window to prevent infection,” USC Today reported.

Unlike anything currently available, the new vaccine focuses on boosting the body itself instead of creating antibodies against certain pathogens. A mere dose of the vaccine is described to “provide rapid protection against nine different bacteria and fungi species,” USC Today noted.

“It’s an early warning system. It’s like Homeland Security putting out a terror alert. Everybody, keep your eyes open. Keep an eye out for suspicious packages. You’re alerting the soldiers and tanks of your immune system. The vaccine activates them,” Spellberg told USC Today

“The vaccine acted through stimulation of the innate, rather than the adaptive, immune system, as demonstrated by efficacy in the absence of lymphocytes that were abrogated by macrophage depletion. A role for macrophages was further supported by the finding that vaccination induced macrophage epigenetic alterations that modulated phagocytosis and the inflammatory response to infection. Together, these data show that this protein-free vaccine is a promising strategy to prevent deadly antimicrobial-resistant healthcare-associated infections,” the researchers wrote in Science Translational Medicine.

Great Need for This Protection

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1.7 million infections and 99,000 deaths are caused by HAIs annually.

“Patients who acquire infections from surgery spend, on average, an additional 6.5 days in the hospital, are five times more likely to be readmitted after discharge and twice as likely to die. Moreover, surgical patients who develop infections are 60% more likely to require admission to a hospital’s intensive care unit. Surgical infections are believed to account for up to 10 billion dollars annually in healthcare expenditures,” the CDC reports.

“All hospitalized patients are susceptible to contracting a [hospital-acquired] infection. Some patients are at greater risk than others: young children, the elderly, and persons with compromised immune systems are more likely to get an infection. Other risk factors are long hospital stays, the use of indwelling catheters, failure of healthcare workers to wash their hands, and overuse of antibiotics,” the CDC notes.

Therefore, USC’s new vaccine may be just what the doctor ordered to protect patients in hospitals and other healthcare settings from deadly HAIs.

Looking Ahead

There are currently no vaccines that are FDA-approved that treat “the most serious antibiotic resistant infections,” USC Today reported.

“Even if there were such vaccines, multiple vaccines would have to be deployed simultaneously to protect against the full slate of antibiotic-resistant microbes that cause healthcare-acquired infections,” Brian Luna, PhD, assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, told USC Today

Thus, USC’s new vaccine could be a boon to hospital antimicrobial stewardship programs. But so far, it has only been tested on mice.

“The next step is getting guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the design of a clinical trial. The first such trial would be done in healthy volunteers to find the right dose of vaccine that is safe and triggers the same kind of immune response in people as seen in the mice,” USC Today reported.

ExBaq LLC has begun talking with potential larger partners who might be willing to help develop the vaccine into clinical testing.

For years hospitals and other healthcare settings—such as long-term care facilities, urgent care clinics, and clinical laboratories—have fought an uphill battle against superbugs. So, for a vaccine to be on the horizon that can prevent life-threatening hospital-acquired infections would be a game changer.

With antimicrobial stewardships being a requirement in all hospitals, medical laboratory managers and microbiologists may celebrate this new development and its potential to be a useful tool in fighting antimicrobial resistant bacteria in their facilities.

—Kristin Althea O’Connor

Related Information:

Superbugs Including MRSA Thwarted by Unconventional Vaccine

A Protein-Free Vaccine Stimulates Innate Immunity and Protects Against Nosocomial Pathogens

Superbug Vaccine “Hulkifies” Macrophages in Mouse Model

FDA Grants Marketing Authorization to Diagnostic Tests for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea with At-Home Sample Collection

FDA says the move will make it easier to gain authorization for other clinical laboratory tests to utilize at-home collection kits

In another sign of how diagnostic testing is responding to changing consumer preferences, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted marketing authorization to LetsGetChecked for the company’s Simple 2 test for chlamydia and gonorrhea, which includes at-home collection of samples sent to the test developer’s clinical laboratories in the US and in Ireland.

This marks the first time the FDA has cleared a diagnostic test for either condition in which samples are collected at home. It’s also the first test with at-home sample collection to be authorized for any sexually transmitted infection (STI) other than HIV, the FDA said in a new release.

Simple 2 Home Collection Kits are available over the counter for anyone 18 or older. The kits employ Hologic’s Aptima collection devices, according to a company press release. A prepaid shipping label is also included to enable delivery to one of LetsGetChecked’s medical laboratories. The company performs the tests using the Hologic Aptima Combo 2 assay for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG).

Samples are collected through a vaginal swab or urine sample. “Results are delivered online in approximately 2-5 days with follow-up virtual consultations and treatment available if needed,” the company press release states.

Previously authorized tests for the conditions required sample collection at the point of care. The company also offers telehealth and online pharmacy services.

Jeff Shuren, MD, JD

“This authorization marks an important public health milestone, giving patients more information about their health from the privacy of their own home,” said Jeff Shuren, MD, JD (above), Director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “We are eager to continue supporting greater consumer access to diagnostic tests, which helps further our goal of bringing more healthcare into the home.” With this emphasis on at-home testing from the FDA, clinical laboratories in the US and Ireland will likely be processing more at-home collected samples. (Photo copyright: FDA.)

Simple 2 Process and Costs

Prior to collecting the sample, the user goes online to complete a questionnaire and activate the kit, the FDA news release notes.

LetsGetChecked, headquartered in New York City and Dublin, Ireland, says its US labs are CLIA– and CAP-certified. The company currently offers more than 30 at-home tests covering STIs, men’s health, women’s health, and COVID-19, at prices ranging from $89 to $249 per test.

The Simple 2 test costs $99, and is not covered by insurance, Verywell Health reported. Consumers can get discounts by subscribing to quarterly, semiannual, or annual tests.

New Regulatory Pathway

The FDA said it reviewed the test under its De Novo regulatory pathway, which is intended for “low- to moderate-risk devices of a new type,” according to the news release.

“Along with this De Novo authorization, the FDA is establishing special controls that define the requirements related to labeling and performance testing,” the agency stated. “When met, the special controls, in combination with general controls, provide a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness for tests of this type.”

This creates a new regulatory classification, the agency said, that will make it easier for similar devices to obtain marketing authorization.

Citing data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FDA news release states that chlamydia and gonorrhea are the most common bacterial STIs in the US. The CDC estimates that there were 1.6 million cases of chlamydia and more than 700,000 cases of gonorrhea in 2021.

“Typically, both infections can be easily treated, but if left untreated, both infections can cause serious health complications for patients, including infertility,” the news release states. “Expanding the availability of STI testing can help patients get quicker results and access to the most appropriate treatment, ultimately helping to curb the rising rates of STIs.”

Experts Praise the FDA’s Authorization of the Lab Test

STI experts contacted by STAT said they welcomed the FDA’s move.

“There are many people who would like to be tested for STIs who may not know where to go or who have barriers to accessing medical care,” said Jodie Dionne, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Infectious Diseases. “If we are going to do a better job of reaching more sexually active people for STIs … we need to be creative about how to get them tested and treated in a way that is highly effective and works for them.”

Family physician Alan Katz, MD, a professor at the University of Hawaii John A Burns School of Medicine, told STAT that the Hologic assay is also used by clinicians who treat people in remote locations to diagnose STIs and is regarded as being highly accurate.

“This option is exceptionally useful for individuals who live in rural areas or are geographically distanced from a clinic where STI testing can be done and there is no telehealth option available,” he told STAT.

With this latest move, the FDA is recognizing that it is time to give consumers more control over their healthcare. This is a signal to clinical laboratories that they should be developing their own strategies and offerings that serve consumers who want to order their own tests. Of course, many states still require a physician’s signature on lab test orders, but that is likely to change over time.

—Stephen Beale

Related Information:

FDA Grants Marketing Authorization of First Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea with At-Home Sample Collection

LetsGetChecked Receives US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) De Novo Authorization for At-Home Chlamydia and Gonorrhea Testing System

FDA Grants Approval for First Time to a Home Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

FDA Authorizes First Home Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

You Can Now Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea with an At-Home Kit FDA Approves Home Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

University of Oxford Researchers Use Spectroscopy and Artificial Intelligence to Create a Blood Test for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Spectroscopic technique was 91% accurate in identifying the notoriously difficult-to-diagnose disease suggesting a clinical diagnostic test for CFS may be possible

Most clinical pathologists know that, despite their best efforts, scientists have failed to come up with a reliable clinical laboratory blood test for diagnosing myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), the condition commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)—at least not one that’s ready for clinical use.

But now an international team of researchers at the University of Oxford has developed an experimental non-invasive test for CFS using a simple blood draw, artificial intelligence (AI), and a spectroscopic technique known as Raman spectroscopy.

The approach uses a laser to identify unique cellular “fingerprints” associated with the disease, according to an Oxford news release.

“When Raman was added to a panel of potentially diagnostic outputs, we improved the ability of the model to identify the ME/CFS patients and controls,” Karl Morten, PhD, Director of Graduate Studies and Principal Investigator at Oxford University, told Advanced Science News. Morton led the research team along with Wei Huang, PhD, Professor of Biological Engineering at Oxford.

The researchers claim the test is 91% accurate in differentiating between healthy people, disease controls, and ME/CFS patients, and 84% accurate in differentiating between mild, moderate, and severe cases, the new release states.

The researchers published their paper in the journal Advanced Science titled, “Developing a Blood Cell-Based Diagnostic Test for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Using Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells.”

Karl Morten, PhD

“This could be a game changer as we are unsure what causes [ME/CFS] and diagnosis occurs perhaps 10 to 20 years after the condition has started to develop,” said Karl Morten, PhD, Director of Graduate Studies and Principal Investigator at Oxford University. “An early diagnosis might allow us to identify what is going wrong with the potential to fix it before the more long-term degenerative changes are observed.” Though this research may not lead to a simple clinical laboratory blood test for CFS, any non-invasive diagnostic test would enable doctors to help many people. (Photo copyright: Oxford University.)

Need for an ME/CFS Test

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes ME/CFS as “a serious, long-term illness that affects many body systems,” with symptoms that include severe fatigue and sleep difficulties. Citing an Institute of Medicine (IoM) report, the agency estimates that 836,000 to 2.5 million Americans suffer from the condition but notes that most cases have not been diagnosed.

“One of the difficulties is the complexity of the disease,” said Jonas Bergquist, MD, PhD, Director of the ME/CFS Research Center of Uppsala University in Sweden, told Advanced Science News. “Because it’s a multi-organ disorder, you get symptoms from many different regions of the body with different onsets, though it’s common with post viral syndrome to have different overlapping [symptoms] that disguise the diagnosis.” Bergquist was not involved with the Oxford study.

One key to the Oxford researchers’ technique is the use of multiple artificial intelligence models to analyze the spectral profiles. “These signatures are complex and by eye there are not necessarily clear features that separate ME/CFS patients from other groups,” Morten told Advanced Science News.

“The AI looks at this data and attempts to find features which can separate the groups,” he continued. “Different AI methods find different features in the data. Individually, each method is not that successful at assigning an unknown sample to the correct group. However, when we combine the different methods, we produce a model which can assign the subjects to the different groups very accurately.”

Without a reliable test, “diagnosis of the condition is difficult, with most patients relying on self-report, questionnaires, and subjective measures to receive a diagnosis,” the Oxford press release noted.

But developing such a test has been challenging, Advanced Science News noted.

How Oxford’s Raman Technique Works

Raman spectroscopy uses a laser to determine the “vibrational modes of molecules,” according to the Oxford press release.

“When a laser beam is directed at a cell, some of the scattered photons undergo frequency shifts due to energy exchanges with the cell’s molecular components,” the press release stated. “Raman micro-spectroscopy detects these shifted photons, providing a non-invasive method for single cell analysis. The resulting single cell Raman spectra serve as a unique fingerprint, revealing the intrinsic and biochemical properties and indicating the physiological and metabolic state of the cell.”

The researchers employed the technique on blood samples from 98 subjects, including 61 ME/CFS patients, 16 healthy controls, and 21 controls with multiple sclerosis (MS), Advanced Science reported.

The Oxford scientists focused their attention on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), as previous studies found that these cells showed “reduced energetic function” in ME/CFS patients. “With this evidence, the team proposed that single-cell analysis of PBMCs might reveal differences in the structure and morphology in ME/CFS patients compared to healthy controls and other disease groups such as multiple sclerosis,” the press release states.

Clinical Laboratory Blood Processing and the Oxford Raman Technique

Oxford’s Raman spectroscopic technique “only requires a small blood sample which could be developed as a point-of-care test perhaps from one drop of blood,” the researchers wrote. However, Advanced Science News pointed out that required laser microscopy equipment costs more than $250,000.

In their Advanced Science paper, the researchers note that the test could be made more widely available by transferring blood samples collected by local clinical laboratories to diagnostic centers that have the needed hardware.

“Alternatively, a compact system containing portable Raman instruments could be developed, which would be much cheaper than a standard Raman microscope, and [which] incorporated with microfluidic systems to stream cells through a Raman laser for detection, eliminating the need for lengthy blood sample processing,” the researchers wrote.

They noted that the technique could be adapted to test for other chronic conditions as well, such as MS, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, and long COVID.

“Our paper is very much a starting point for future research,” Morten told Advanced Science News. “Larger cohorts need to be studied, and if Raman proves useful, we need to think carefully about how a test might be developed.”

Bergquist agreed, stating it’s “not necessarily something you would see in a doctor’s office. It requires a lot of advanced data analysis to use—I still see it as a research methodology. But in the long run, it could be developed into a tool that could be used in a more simplistic way.”

Though a useable diagnostic test may be far off, clinical laboratories should consider how they can aid in ME/CFS research.

—Stephen Beale

Related Information:

First Steps Towards Developing a New Diagnostic Test to Accurately Identify Hallmarks of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Blood Cells

First Ever Diagnostic Test for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Sparks Hope

Developing a Blood Cell-Based Diagnostic Test for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Using Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Blood Test for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Found to Be 91% Accurate

Scientists Develop Blood Test for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Biomarkers for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS): A Systematic Review

Biomarker for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Identified

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