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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