AdvanDx, Inc. today announced the commercial launch of Enterococcus QuickFISH BC, a new rapid molecular diagnostic test that identifies potentially life threatening bloodstream infections caused by Enterococcus. This new QuickFISH assay is immediately available and complements the September 2012 launch of Staphylococcus QuickFISH BC for the identification of Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci. With these new products, QuickFISH can now be used to identify the causative pathogens of approximately 70% (Ann Clin Microbiol Antimicrob. 2004 May 10;3:7) of hospital acquired infections from blood cultures.
Enterococcus species are the fourth most common cause of hospital-acquired bacteremia in the U.S. and fifth most common in Europe. The vast majority of enteroccocal infections are caused by Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium. Treatment decisions are difficult because these species exhibit differing antibiotic resistance profiles. While E. faecalis is generally susceptible to ampicillin, infections caused by other enterococci, mainly E. faecium, are often resistant to ampicillin or vancomycin, or both. Conventional identification methods can take up to 3 days or longer, and patients withE. faecium bloodstream infections often receive inappropriate antimicrobial therapy for days, leading to higher mortality and significant hospital costs. With this new test, clinicians may prescribe earlier and more appropriate therapy for enterococcal infections. QuickFISH marks a significant advance in time-to-result and ease-of-use that will help clinicians, hospital pharmacists and clinical microbiologists optimize antibiotic therapy much earlier for patients with bloodstream infections.
QuickFISH is a new, rapid, molecular diagnostic platform developed by AdvanDx based on its clinically proven proprietary PNA technology. The new platform enables unprecedented (20 minute) species identification of bacteria directly from positive blood cultures allowing the reporting of pathogen identification at the same time as the reporting of Gram stain results.