Assessment of infection in chronic wounds based on the activities of elastase, lysozyme and myeloperoxidase

Infection in wounds affects about 2% of the population in developed countires at least once in their lifetime, and the lack of tools for its rapid diagnosis is still a problem 1. Standard procedures of infection detection include the judgement of the classical clinical signs, the detection of signals specific to secondary wounds, or the quantification of the microbial load 2–5. The determination of the microbial load is a time-consuming standard procedure, although the presence of microbes per se is not indicative of infection 2.