The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its latest reports on antibacterial agents in clinical and preclinical development, and on diagnostics that are already available or in the pipeline to detect and identify priority bacteria listed in the WHO bacterial priority pathogens list (BPPL).
Both reports seek to guide antibacterial research and development (R&D) to more effectively address the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Of particular interest is the report: The Landscape analysis of commercially available and pipeline in vitro diagnostics for bacterial priority pathogens, which maps existing and pipeline tools to detect and identify WHO BPPL pathogens, and to perform phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and genotypic resistance testing.
The report identifies persistent diagnostic gaps, including:
- the absence of multiplex platforms suitable for use in intermediate referral (level II) laboratories to identify bloodstream infections directly from whole blood without culture;
- insufficient access to biomarker tests (such as C-reactive protein and procalcitonin) to distinguish bacterial from viral infections; and
- limited simple, point-of-care diagnostic tools for primary and secondary care facilities.
These limitations disproportionately affect patients in low-resource settings, where most people first present at primary health-care facilities.
WHO stresses the urgent need for affordable, robust, and easy-to-use diagnostic platforms, including sample-in/result-out systems that work with multiple sample types (blood, urine, stool, respiratory specimens).
