Enteric fever, due to Salmonella, remains a significant public health problem predominantly in children in developing countries. Typhoid fever affects more than 20 million people per year and is associated to 300,000 deaths. These high rates are due to inappropriate treatment strategy but also to the lack of fast, reliable and inexpensive diagnostic assays. Diagnosis of typhoid remains also a challenge because a low bacterial load can be responsible of an illness and the volume of blood that can be collected from children is limited.

To overcome this sensitivity issue, Fast Track Diagnostics (Luxembourg) - a leader in the design, development and manufacture of infectious disease detection kits have developed the first ever unique complete solution on the molecular diagnostic market: from the sample collection and enrichment to the real-time PCR results, all components required are included for the efficient detection of typhoid fever.

This very new solution, the FTlyo Enteric fever kit, includes blood collection tubes containing a proprietary Salmonella enrichment broth and ready-to-use multiplex PCR for detection of: Salmonella spp., Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi including an internal control.

This solution is even more innovative that all the reagents required for the PCR experiment – primers, probes, enzymes and buffers – are lyophilised in single patient sample tubes. Clinicians only need to add nucleic-acid extract to the ready-to-use tubes and start the PCR run. The whole detection process is reduced to eight hours while, in most cases, it can take up to several days and results . Furthermore, the lyophilised format allows transport at room temperature avoiding the cold chain process and the degradation of reagents due to freeze/thaw.

“Supporting infectious disease detection in the developing world has always been a priority for Fast Track Diagnostics”, said Dr. William Carman, CEO of Fast Track Diagnostics. “We are delighted to offer this unique solution in a lyophilised format to simplify and ensure true positives and true negatives when it comes to the detection of deadly Salmonella strains.”