Susanne Drechsler received a best abstract award for her work “Characterization of microbial spread during abdominal sepsis by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)” at the LBG Health Science Meeting 2018.

Sepsis is a life-threatening organ-dysfunction caused by a dys-regulated immune response to an infection. This study compared two methods for identification and characterization of bacteria in the circulation and the abdominal fluid during abdominal sepsis. Microbiology cultures, the standard method, were compared to NGS, a faster and more sensible method for detection of cell-free bacterial DNA.

It could be shown, that cell-free DNA quantitatively matched with the sepsis severity. During acute sepsis, NGS detected the same bacterial species but was more sensitive than microbiology cultures in the blood. Therefore, for the diagnosis of sepsis and identification of underlying systemic infectious pathogens, NGS is a promising alternative to microbiology cultures.

This study was a collaboration with Kai Sohn (Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology, Stuttgart) und Monika Ehling-Schulz (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna).