Tiny robot detects drug-resistant TB in an hour

Toronto: Scientists have created a microscopic robot that can quickly identify whether a tuberculosis patient is resistant to the basic, first-line drugs prescribed to fight the potentially deadly disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls tuberculosis drug resistance "a formidable obstacle" to treatment and prevention of a disease that killed 240,000 people in 2016. The technology, developed by researchers at the Brock University in Canada, builds on an earlier version of the microscopic robot - called the three-dimensional DNA nanomachine - created in 2016 to detect diseases in a blood sample within 30 minutes. The team re-designed the nanomachine so that it could uncover mutations in the genes found in the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. The nanomachine holds the potential to determine, within one hour, whether or not tuberculosis bacteria contain the genetic mutations that make them resistant to the basic, first-line drugs prescribed to fight tuberculosis.

According to WHO, resistance occur mostly because patients do not adhere to the strict schedule of antibiotics they need to take to get cured. The bacterial cells' genes change so that the bacteria can survive future exposures to the same antibiotics, which means a second-line treatment is then required.