A groundbreaking blood test that can detect sepsis in under ten minutes, by analyzing white blood cells, may soon be available in up to 11 US states by the end of this year.
While sepsis may not dominate news headlines, its deadly impact is immense, and this new development is being hailed by researchers as one of the most significant breakthroughs in modern medical history.
Described as a “turning point” in fighting against one of the world’s most lethal diseases, this new test offers hope for faster diagnosis and treatment, which could ultimately save millions of lives.
Sepsis is a severe and often fatal condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overacts to an infection, leading to widespread inflammation and, in some cases, organ failure. According to medical experts, one person dies from sepsis every three seconds, resulting in over 11 million deaths each year worldwide – more than breast, prostate, and bowel cancer combined.
Despite the severity of this condition, early diagnosis has long been a challenge for doctors. Sepsis often masquerades as other less severe illnesses, leading it to be dubbed the “silent killer.” This difficulty in early detection has made sepsis one of the leading causes of preventable deaths worldwide.
The new test works by forcing a small sample of blood through a tiny tube and observing how the white blood cells – key components of the body’s immune system – respond under pressure.
In patients affected by sepsis, white blood cells become softer, more squishy, and elongate when subjected to pressure. These changes in cell shape make it possible to differentiate between healthy individuals and those suffering from sepsis. The more elongated the white blood cells, the higher the likelihood of sepsis. Although measuring cell shape to detect sepsis isn’t entirely new, the methods used in the past were slow and often unreliable.
In previous approaches, scientists had to manually examine and count the deformed white cells under a microscope, a time-consuming and error-prone process that often led to inaccurate diagnoses.
Professor Michael Atar, a British scientist and lecturer at New York University, has been at the forefront of this new development. Known as “Mr. Sepsis” within the medical community, Atar has been a strong advocate for faster and more reliable diagnostic tools.
“Sepsis is notorious as the ‘silent killer’ because it is so easily missed early on, when a patient’s symptoms can often be mistaken for other less serious illnesses,” said Atar. He emphasized the critical importance of rapid diagnosis and treatment, noting that “Rapid diagnosis and treatment is crucial to a good outcome, but there has never been a single, reliable diagnostic test available to doctors, costing precious time and people’s lives.”
This new test, known as IntelliSep, represents a significant step forward. Developed by Cytovale, a Silicon Valley-based company, the IntelliSep test uses cutting-edge technology to rapidly detect the microscopic deformities in white blood cells associated with sepsis. It does this by employing an ultra-high-speed camera capable of capturing over 500,000 frames per second.
The resulting images are then analyzed by an advanced AI-powered computer that counts the number of misshapen white cells in just minutes. The test is incredibly accurate, with an average accuracy rate of 97%, making it far more reliable than previous methods.
Professor Atar, who has been a lead investor and consultant for Cytovale over the past decade, is optimistic about the test’s potential to revolutionize sepsis diagnosis and treatment.
“Cytovale’s IntelliSep device is, by any objective measure, the ‘holy grail’ that the medical community has been so desperate to find,” Atar remarked from his home in London home.
“The technology behind it is genuinely groundbreaking and it has the real-world, tried-and-tested potential to save millions of lives, year on year, across the planet,” he added.
Unlike many promising medical breakthroughs that never make it beyond clinical trials, IntelliSep has already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in hospitals. It is currently in operation at a hospital in Louisiana and is expected to be introduced to ten more hospitals across the US by the end of 2024. This rapid rollout is a testament to the test’s potential to have a real and immediate impact on patient outcomes.
The importance of this test cannot be overstated. Sepsis is often caused by an abnormal immune response to a bacterial infection, either internal or external. When the body’s white blood cells, which normally protect against harmful bacteria, overact, they can end up destroying healthy cells as well.
If sepsis is not diagnosed and treated quickly – usually with antibiotics – it can lead to organ failure and death in as little as 12 hours. For doctors, the lack of a reliable diagnostic test has been a major barrier to providing timely treatment. They have had to rely on secondary symptoms, such as high blood pressure and elevated heart rate, to make educated guesses about whether a patient with an infection might be at risk of sepsis. This guesswork has undoubtedly contributed many preventable deaths.
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