Executive Summary : | Urinary tract infection (UTI) affects around 150 million global populations annually and is one of the most outpatient infections. The use of antibiotics results in the development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogens, making it difficult and ineffective to diagnose and prescribe medication for MDR-UTI. The gold standard for detecting UTI and antibiotic-resistant pathogens is urine cultures tests, which require a laboratory setup and take 24-72 hours to grow. Many attempts at urine culture in low-resources settings have been made, but they suffer from accuracy and lack sensitivity. A simpler, low-cost, novel point-of-care diagnostic method is needed to identify MDR-UTI-causing pathogens. The lateral flow assay format is one of the best candidates for this purpose. The researchers aim to develop a prototype for conducting sensitive, accurate, and affordable point-of-care-compatible isothermal nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) for MDR-UTI. They plan to use the recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay, performed in mesophilic temperature ranges, for the identification of the most prevalent pathogens causing UTI. The paper-microfluidic device will be optimized using computational design tools and validated with experiments. The proposed RPA-LFA device aims to replace conventional laboratory techniques with a field-deployable compact version for MDR-UTI detection. |