Summary
European healthcare organizations have always been more aggressive in identifying MRSA infections. Europe popularized the "search and destroy" protocol of MRSA containment. This new method by Roche is a valuable addition in this arsenal. I expect the LightCycler MRSA Test by Roche to be popular and very lucrative for Roche.
Analysis
MRSA continues to be a challenge in healthcare organizations world wide. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), such as MRSA contribute to patient morbidity and mortality, and significantly increased cost associated with resultant extensive treatment and increased length of stay.
In addition community acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) has become more prevalent even among otherwise healthy non-hospitalized individuals and has served to feed the pipeline into nosocomial infections. Together these two sources of MRSA infections have served to underscore the need for rapid diagnosis of MRSA.
The emphasis has broadened from aggresive treatment of active infections to identification of colonized individuals who might well infect compromised patients in hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions.
In Europe an estimated 4 million HAIs and 36, 000 deaths are attributable to MRSA. At least 10 percent of patients in the typical EU hospital has an HAI. The UK alone spends about £1 billion a year
fighting HAIs.
European healthcare providers are concerned with all the downsides of HAIs; with antimicrobial resistance become a growing concern as well. If MRSA lurking undetected in patients develops resistance to the big guns like vancomycin, then the entire international ID-treatment community will be threatened. That is another reason that it makes very good sense to "search and destroy" MRSA aggressivley.
This new test by Roche uses nasal swabs as a specimen and the test is performed on their LightCycler 2.0 instrument using the well-established polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This rapid test adds another big gun to the arsenal in the fight against MRSA.
My guess is that Roche will see significant financial gain from this venture.
