If you are currently dealing with a chronic infection, then you have likely visited your doctor at least twice, if not more, in the hope of finding an antibiotic that will improve and ultimately get rid of the bacteria causing the infection.

In visiting your doctor, he may have taken a sample from the sight of the infection and sent it to a laboratory for testing to determine which antibiotic would be the most appropriate to treat the infection. The laboratory test that is routinely used for this purpose is the MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) test.

While the MIC test is considered the standard in choosing an antibiotic for a particular infection, it is missing one key element, in that it does not test the bacteria in the state in which they are found in the infection within the body. Bacteria essentially can be present in two forms: as free-floating organisms and those found in biofilms. Biofilms are organized communities of microorganisms, such as bacteria, that adhere to a surface, enclosed in a protective layer. Biofilms can be 1000 times more resistant to the same organism in a free-floating state. It is known that 80% of all human infections are caused by biofilms, however all of our knowledge and technology regarding the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics, including the MIC test, has been based on experiments with free-floating bacteria. As a consequence of using the results from this test, patients may be given a less than effective antibiotic, delaying the correct treatment and allowing bacteria to multiply, a path that ultimately leads to increased antibiotic resistance.

Innovotech’s biofilm susceptibility tests are different, however, in that they take the bacteria from the patient sample and grow it as a biofilm prior to testing against a series of antibiotics. Quite often, the MIC test will indicate certain antibiotics to be effective against a specific bacteria, however when tested using Innovotech’s biofilm test, the bacteria are found to be resistant to the same antibiotics, making them ineffective against eliminating the bacteria and controlling the infection.

Most bacterial infections can be treated with one antibiotic at a time. Innovotech has biofilm susceptibility tests for these kinds of infections, and can test bacteria responsible for the majority of human infections. A few, such as lung infections (particularly in Cystic Fibrosis patients) are routinely treated with two antibiotics. Current testing does not, however, provide guidance on combination antibiotics despite the fact that doctors routinely use combinations to treat these persistent biofilm infections. Innovotech also has a biofilm susceptibility test, bioFILM PA™, to address these kinds of infections, providing results that show the most effective combinations of antibiotics specific to that patient.