All-electrical monitoring of bacterial antibiotic susceptibility in a microfluidic device

Significance For the past 50 y, antibiotics have cured common bacterial infections quickly and effectively. Many strains of bacteria, however, are gaining resistance to common antibiotics. The solution to this problem includes a more judicious use of antibiotic therapies, directed by rapid point-of-care antibiotic susceptibility tests. The focus here is a simple all-electrical sensing approach implemented in a microfluidic device that measures the growth of a tiny bacteria sample in antibiotics. This approach has the potential to rapidly provide antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria along with minimum inhibitory concentrations and inform of the mechanisms of action of antibiotics—all without resorting to high-resolution microscopy.