Microfluidics-Based Organism Isolation from Whole Blood: An Emerging Tool for Bloodstream Infection Diagnosis.

Abstract

The diagnosis of bloodstream infections presents numerous challenges, in part, due to the low concentration of pathogens present in the peripheral bloodstream. As an alternative to existing time-consuming, culture-based diagnostic methods for organism identification, microfluidic devices have emerged as rapid, high-throughput and integrated platforms for bacterial and fungal enrichment, detection, and characterization. This focused review serves to highlight and compare the emerging microfluidic platforms designed for the isolation of sepsis-causing pathogens from blood and suggest important areas for future research.