Sensor for In-situ Detection of Bacteria in Urinary Tract Infection

Detection of bacteria in urine is essential for the early diagnosis of infectious diseases, especially urinary tract infection (UTI). Traditional methods of UTI detection are time-consuming and require a series of steps for sample processing and nurses’ intervene. In this work, a novel type of biosensor that uses antibodies as the bio-probe and magnetostrictive particles (MSPs) as the sensor platform is developed. The biosensor significantly simplifies the UTI detection into one step without any intervene or sample processing by nurses. No cell cultivation or lysis process is needed. Escherichia coli was used in the experiments to demonstrate the advantages of the biosensor. That is, Escherichia coli in urine is monitored by the sensor signal - resonant frequency shift of the MSP. It experimentally demonstrated that the sensors could generate stable signals in urine environments and the observed frequency shift was almost instantly and became increasingly apparent in as short as 20 minutes.