Rapid and Selective Detection of Pathogenic Bacteria in Bloodstream Infections with Aptamer-Based Recognition

Sepsis and bacteremia are life-threatening clinical syndromes associated with significant patient morbidity and mortality. Rapid and sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria is the key to improve patient survival rates. Herein, we have rationally constructed a simple aptamer-based capture platform to shorten the time needed for confirmation of bacterial bloodstream infection in clinical blood samples. This capture platform is made of a mesoporous TiO2-coated magnetic nanoparticle and is modified with target aptamer. It features excellent bacterial enrichment efficiency of about 80% even at low bacterial concentrations (10–2000 CFU mL–1). More importantly, the bacteria can be enriched within 2 h, and the time for bacterial identification is effectively shortened in comparison to the "gold standard" in clinical diagnosis of bloodstream infection. The aptamer-based capture platform may pave a way for the detection of biomarkers and find potential applications in disease diagnosis.