Rapid identification of urinary tract infections based on ultrasensitive bacteria detection using volumetric bar-chart chip

Rapid and accurate detection of bacteria in urine is the key to improving the diagnostic efficiency of urinary tract infections. In this work, a microfluidic device was developed for visually quantifying pathogenic bacteria in urine without any external equipment. This pioneering strategy has high sensitivity, selectivity and accuracy for rapid detection of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus simultaneously. It not only shortens the entire test time to 1.5 h, but also successfully reduces the detection limit to 1 CFU/mL, which significantly improves the early diagnosis rate of bacterial infections. Due to the strong affinity of aptamers to target bacteria and the amplification of signals by platinum nanoparticle probes (Pt NP probes) with high catalytic activity, the sensitivity of the device has reached 1 CFU/mL. Moreover, the detection results of UTIs in clinical specimens were consistent with the gold standard, which not only verifies the good accuracy and reliability of the method in such a complex liquid environment, but also implies that the application of the device is paving a new path for biomarker detection and disease diagnosis.