Antibiotics don’t work against viruses. But doctors sometimes give antibiotics to patients who have what turns out to be a viral infection. Which adds to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Tests to tell a bacterial infection from a viral one take one to two days and don’t always return a clear ___1___.So researchers in Israel have developed a rapid test – using a CSI tool.

The chemical Luminol is used at ___2___because it fluoresces in the presence of blood. When we get an infection, white blood cells called phagocytes leap into action. In the process, they consume oxygen and produce what are called Reactive Oxygen Species, or ROS. Luminol makes the ROS glow.

But bacterial and viral infections produce different ROS’s and so have different types of glows. By ___3___ the infections of 69 patients, the researchers were able to create different Luminol signatures for bacterial versus viral infections. In ___4___, the scientists achieved 89 percent accuracy. The research was published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

The scientists hope to ___5___the test to make it more accurate. Which could help doctors make better diagnoses—and reduce the use of unnecessary antibiotics.
【視聽版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
prognosis crime scenes evaluating blind tests fine-tune
抗生素對(duì)病毒并不起作用。但是醫(yī)生有時(shí)給病毒感染病人應(yīng)用抗生素。這些導(dǎo)致了細(xì)菌的耐藥性問題。區(qū)分細(xì)菌感染和病毒感染試驗(yàn)需要1~2天，而且不是總能得到有效的診斷結(jié)果。因此以色列的研究者發(fā)明了一種使用CSI工具的快速檢測(cè)法。 化學(xué)物質(zhì)魯米諾應(yīng)用在犯罪現(xiàn)場(chǎng)中，因?yàn)樗谘褐邪l(fā)熒光。當(dāng)我們被感染后，白細(xì)胞（吞噬細(xì)胞）開始工作。在這個(gè)過程中，他們消耗氧氣，并產(chǎn)生叫做活性氧（ROS）的物質(zhì)。魯米諾使得ROS發(fā)出熒光。 但是細(xì)菌性和病毒性的感染產(chǎn)生不同的ROS，所以就會(huì)有不同種類的熒光。通過對(duì)69例感染病人的分析，研究人員能夠?qū)?xì)菌性和病毒性感染合成不同的魯米諾信號(hào)。在盲測(cè)中，科學(xué)家們已經(jīng)達(dá)到了89%的準(zhǔn)確率。這個(gè)研究已經(jīng)發(fā)表在《分析化學(xué)》雜志上了。 科學(xué)家希望調(diào)整優(yōu)化測(cè)試使得它更加精確。這可以幫助醫(yī)生更精確地診斷并且減少不必要的抗生素使用。