Bacteria or virus? Diagnostic tool could curb antibiotic overuse

As many as half of the antibiotics prescribed to outpatients in the United States are unnecessary. And many of those scripts come from doctors who aren’t sure whether a patient is infected with bacteria — and needs antibiotics — or whether the illness is caused by a virus. Now, researchers have developed a new way to tell these kinds of pathogens apart. Instead of looking for the presence of the foreign attacker itself, as existing methods do, the new diagnostic tool uses our body’s response to determine if a patient is feeling lousy because of a bacteria, a virus, or something else entirely. The technique isn’t ready for the clinic yet, but the researchers who developed it say they hope that will change in the next few years. “We can put this in a clinical laboratory right now,” said Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, director of Duke University’s Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine...