Considering
the closure last week of the Town Hall in Pennsville Township, New Jersey,
prompted by an employee being infected with MRSA (Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus), the ongoing development by Zenosense of an early
warning detection system capable of identifying the VOC (volatile organic
compound) signature of MRSA in the air or in a given patient, could be a real
money and life-saving solution. Built off established programming and
patent-pending, single-sensor hardware created by one of the top European
sensor companies, Sgenia Group (whose Zenon Biosystem subsidiary is working
hand-in-hand with ZENO on the device), the MRSA detection unit as proposed
could be cost-effectively deployed in healthcare facilities of all sizes,
government buildings, or just about anywhere demand for such an early warning
system is needed.
Early
detection and treatment is key for combating the spread of Hospital Acquired
Infections (HAIs) like health care-associated MRSA (or HA-MRSA, as opposed to
community-acquired MRSA, or CA-MRSA) and although the technology for detecting
MRSA VOC signatures is proven, existing implementations are cumbersome and
ill-suited to widespread use, as well as being quite costly. The idea of
mounting a special detector on Sgenia’s sensor to handle the job of constant
overwatch is something of a breakthrough when it comes to procedurally
screening for MRSA in hospitals. The Sgenia technology is able to virtualize
tens of thousands of sensors using a single physical sensor, creating a
low-cost, compact architecture that has the potential to be mocked up for other
uses as well, in addition to MRSA.
Along
these lines, ZENO has recently announced plans to also develop a similar system
to the MRSA device for detecting the leading killer among cancers, lung cancer,
which kills as many Americans each year as the next three most common cancers
combined (according to American Cancer Society data for 2014). As with MRSA,
early detection of lung cancer can often be the difference between life and
death. Sadly, the vast majority (75% or so) of lung cancer cases are detected too
late to be cured, despite there being a roughly 70% cure-rate if it is detected
during Stage 1. An early detection system for lung cancer that is compact and
easy to use, as well as cost-effective, would be a real game changer. Clearly,
failure to detect the disease until it has already substantially progressed
seems to be the leading fatality indicator and the inherent difficulty of
diagnosing lung cancer (requires multiple tests, high-priced tomography and
biopsy) merely exacerbates this dynamic.
A
particular strain of MRSA transmitted mostly via pigs (CC398) is currently
continuing to spread over in Denmark. As of July this year, according to World
Bulletin, there are 575 reported human infections (104 cases in the month of
July alone). Denmark has seen a similar rise of infection rate for MRSA as in
other western countries, up a whopping 1,410% from 2009 to 2013 (from 43 to 649
cases in four years).
This
data casts further doubts on the sustainability of large-scale agricultural
over use of antibiotics on their livestock to cover up for poor health/living
conditions, particularly in light of the recent Johns Hopkins University study
showing a correlation in Pennsylvania between proximity to such operations and
rates of MRSA infection. With no cost-effective system on the market today for
early detection of MRSA or lung cancer, ZENO is potentially sitting on a
readily deployable goldmine that could save millions of lives, with estimated
manufacturing costs at around only $50 to $100 per unit.
The
World Health Organization report in April acknowledged antibiotic resistance as
a global health crisis and moved to implement a global MRSA
surveillance/reporting system to help pin-point and track relevant data in near
real-time, so global health authorities can try to get a handle on the
situation. Active detection and isolation has been the empirically validated
protocol for containment (over 300 evidence-based studies and 500 abstracts)
and the ZENO solution fits very nicely with this standardized approach.
Estimates are that antibiotic-resistant pathogens cost the healthcare system
from $21B to $34B annually in the U.S. alone and that MRSA kills more Americans
each year than HIV/AIDS, emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, and homicide combined.
To
learn more about Zenosense, visit: www.zenosense.net
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