A blood test that can tell if you have a virus or a bacterial infection

Stanford researchers develop a test that needs to read only 18 genes to determine if a virus or bacteria is causing an infection, and if you need an antibiotic. There are a lot of reasons you don’t need to take antibiotics, even if you think you do. In fact, experts are discovering that a good number of antibiotics given out every day do nothing of value for the people taking them. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that half of antibiotic prescriptions are inappropriate. Besides acute side effects, the practice of over-prescribing unnecessary antibiotics has given rise to bacteria so smart and powerful that none of our best efforts can stop them. Those bugs kill about 23,000 people each year, the same amount as the entire population of Laguna Beach, California. Bacteria or virus? To help preserve the effectiveness of current antibiotics, experts are looking into rapid diagnostic tools that can determine if...