This Glow Stick Could Save Your Life From Salmonella
Scientists overhauled a tedious process to diagnose salmonella infection, replacing it with a quick, easy-to-perform test that lights up like a glow stick in the presence of the pesky pathogen. Best of all, the new test reduces the wait time for results from the standard one day or longer, to a vastly more convenient one hour.
Each year, Salmonella typhimurium causes 1.35 million infections and kills hundreds of people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of these infections stem from eating contaminated food (though people can also be sickened from the bacterium at petting zoos and daycares). Eating undercooked chicken is one of the major sources of salmonella infections, partially because about one in every 25 packages of grocery store chicken are contaminated.
Most people who contract salmonella recover after a brief bout of fever, stomach cramps, and diarrhea, but in rare cases the infection spreads from the intestines to a person’s bloodstream and can be life-threatening. In these cases, identifying the cause of the infection and treating it promptly with antibiotics is the difference between life and death. Culturing—growing a bacterial sample in a petri dish—is the gold standard for diagnosing salmonella infection, but it can take more than a day to perform and requires clinical diagnostic training.