The human race has witnessed the advancement in the field of technology that propelled the world to become a better place to live in and now researchers from Finland claimed that Machine Learning (ML) have come out with a mechanism to predict the risk of developing a serious and possibly life-threatening infection from hospital bug.
Staphylococcus epidermidis, which is a part of the normal human flora, is actually the skin flora but it may also become the most important trigger for nosocomial infections with in-dwelling devices and surgical procedures such as hip replacements.
Staphylococcus epidermidis:
- can be defeated by harmful skin bacteria as well as by antibiotics;
- can grow from 1 to 2 µm;
- can live on human skin, most preferably in sweaty joints, such as the armpits and sometimes on the mucous membrane; and
- It also protects the human body from harmful bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus.
A Finnish research team that has specialized in microbiology and genetics from the University of Helsinki and the Aalto-University in Finland has recently combined large-scale population genomics and in vitro measurements of immunologically relevant features of S. epidermidis.
In their recent study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers stated that by using ML technology the team of experts could successfully predict the risk of developing an infection from the genomic features of a bacterial isolate.
It should be noted that previous research material could not reveal that whether all members of the S. epidermidis population colonising the skin asymptomatically are capable of causing the life-threatening infections or if some of them have a heightened tendency to do the same when they enter either a deep tissue or the bloodstream.
About their new findings, the Finnish researchers are confident that their study has opened the path for the future technology where high-risk genotypes are identified proactively when a person is to undergo a surgery that has a high potential to reduce the burden of nosocomial infections caused by S. epidermidis, which is a Gram-positive bacterium.
