MIT sepsis sensor diagnoses condition in minutes

Sepsis occurs when the body’s immune response to infection triggers an inflammation chain reaction throughout the body, causing high heart rate, high fever, shortness of breath, and other issues. If left unchecked, it can lead to septic shock, where blood pressure falls, and organs shut down.

To diagnose sepsis, doctors traditionally rely on various diagnostic tools, including assessment of symptoms and vital signs, blood tests, and other imaging and lab tests. However, the condition can often go undetected until it is too late to effectively treat.

MIT’s new technology -which is the subject of a paper being presented at the 41st Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Berlin this week (23 - 27 July 2019) works by detecting protein biomarkers that occur at very low levels at the early stages of sepsis, before other symptoms have become apparent.

Whilst these biomarkers are difficult to detect quickly using traditional assay devices, the MIT system is reportedly able to detect clinically significant levels of IL-6  - a protein produced in response to inflammation – in about 25 minutes using less than a finger prick of blood.