There are 3.7 million visits in the U.S. annually for acute sinusitis, whereas there are ~75 million visits annually for the common cold. Many patients with the common cold receive antibiotic prescriptions for a presumed sinusitis where none was needed. It has been estimated that two-thirds of the prescriptions are unnecessary given that physicians cannot differentiate the common cold from acute sinusitis most of the time. The gold standard for diagnosis of acute sinusitis is placement of a needle into the sinus and obtaining a culture, which is an invasive, painful procedure and cannot be performed in a primary care setting. There is a clinical need for an easy, rapid method of detecting bacterial infection in the nose/sinuses.
The objective of the project is to develop a rapid assay for the 3 most common bacteria that cause sinusitis that can be used in an office setting. The team will perform some research on all available assay methods for the most common bacteria. The best available tests will be obtained. The team will work on improving the available tests so that they could potentially be combined into one rapid test that can be interpreted within 15 minutes. The next step would be to test the assay in a clinical setting.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Weian Zhao, PhD, Associate Professor, Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UC Irvine, weianz@uci.edu
Physician Mentor: Hamid Djalilian, M.D. PhD Department of Otolaryngology, UC Irvine, hdjalili@uci.edu
Team:
| Member Last Name | Member First Name | Lead? | Email (@uci.edu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haroon | Omar | oharoon | |
| Pearson | Isabelle Louise Anne | ilpearso | |
| Rathod | Heren Prakash | rathodh | |
| Su | Hung Fu | hfsu | |
| Vinsonhaler | Hunter Maxfield | Yes | hvinsonh |