ECE News 2026

CSU ECE shows feasibility in near real-time MRSA screening for hospitals

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a commonly encountered bacteria that leads to healthcare-associated infections and life-threatening conditions. Healthcare facilities often implement screening programs to detect MRSA, using culture-based diagnostic or nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) approaches. Culture-based methods require more than 24 hours to yield results. This long turn-around-time (TAT) hampers effective administration of antibiotics. Both methods have issues related to limit of detection (LOD) at different levels of CFU/mL, e.g. 89-812 CFU/mL for the NAAT method.

These issues were recently tackled by Dr. Siu-Tung Yau’s research group from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cleveland State University together with collaborators at University Hospitals (UH) and University of Michigan, using a novel platform to provide near-real-time detection and ultra-low limit of detection LOD. This team has previously developed a culture-independent rapid detection-analysis platform (RDAP) for the detection of bacteria and antibiotic susceptibility testing. 

The figure shows a hand-held prototype of RDPA designed and fabricated by Dr. Yau’s group. The prototype provides multiplexing capability allowing multiple samples to be tested simultaneously.

In the present study, RDAP was used to test on a cohort of 64 clinical specimens provided by the Clinical Microbiology Lab of UH. The test results were compared with those produced by two reference methods – a culture method and a NAAT method which are routinely used by the lab for MRSA screening. The study was conducted with a simultaneous blinded design with the primary outcomes of percent agreement with the lab methods and the turn-around-time (TAT). RDAP showed a 100% negative predictive value to both reference methods. In a few cases, RDAP’s resulted in false-positive results due to its ultra-low LOD of 3 CFU/mL. RDAP demonstrated a TAT of 2.3 hours testing on unprocessed specimens. Importantly, RDAP demonstrated its capability of detecting and differentiating both MRSA and MSSA, which is the methicillin-sensitive strain of Staphylococcus aureus. This diagnostic function is not provided by the NAAT method. Taken together, RDAP demonstrated a significantly shortened TAT with a high negative predictive value to reduce unnecessary broad-spectrum antimicrobial use, minimizing the risk of bacteria-resistance development, adverse effects, and costs. For MRSA screening, RDAP is capable to provide near real-time detection results to improve infection prevention practices and potentially to aid in therapeutic decision-making. This work was published in Microbiology Spectrum of the American Society for Microbiology.