A Spectroscopic Methodology to Early Detection of Urinary Tract Infections

Healthcare-associated infections (HCAI) are a critical public health problem, with 30 to 40% of infections related to the urinary tract system. These urinary tract infections (UTIs) are considered one of the most common microbial infections in hospital settings and everyday community contexts, where about 80% are highly correlated with urinary catheter insertion - Catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI). Considering that 15 to 25% of hospitalised patients need to be catheterised during their treatments and most CAUTIs are asymptomatic, it results in a tremendous challenge to early diagnosis of CAUTI, therefore, to initiate its treatment. The lack of standardized methods as a first step for urine monitoring and early detection of UTIs, is the driving force of this work that aims to explore the potential of absorption and fluorescence spectroscopic methodologies to detect UTIs. Urine samples were used without any previous treatment to target the most straightforward testing protocol possible. In this work, we successfully developed a powerful methodology that combines ratiometric fluorescence spectroscopy measurements and transmittance at 600 nm to distinguish healthy urines from infected urines. The complementary use of fluorescence spectroscopy and transmittance is what makes the new methodology we propose such a powerful approach to monitor urine samples and make the early detection of UTIs since it provides a quantitative analysis of both healthy and infected urines.