Rapid Bioluminescent Antibiotic Susceptibility Assay

Abstract

Rapid testing of pathogen susceptibility to antibiotics is of great practical value for rational chemotherapy of pyoinflammatory deseases and postoperative complications of microbial etiology. The standard microbiological methods i.e. the disk diffusion method and the method of serial dilutions are labour- and time-consuming (not less than 18—36 hours). The method of the authors is based on measuring bioluminescence resulting from interaction of adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP) and ATP reagent, a standard reaction mixture of firefly luciferase (an enzyme) and luciferin. The bioluminescence intensity is proportional to the ATP concentration in the reaction mixture and the ATP concentration is proportional to the number of the pathogen viable cells in the sample. The bioluminescence intensity value in the pathogen suspension aliquots with and without (control) the antibiotic were compared after the incubation for 5 hours and the coefficient of the microbial cell growth inhibition was calculated. Satisfactory correlation (R²≥88%) of the results of the bioluminescent assay and the assay with the disk diffusion method and the method of serial dilutions was observed.