Patent ID: 6727073
Filing Date: 2004-04-27
Classification: G01N,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for testing a fecal liquid sample obtained from a patient suffering from diarrhea, other than a breast-fed infant, in an effort to identify the causative organism for the diarrhea and thereby enable the timely prescription of a medicament known to be effective against said causative organism or the diagnosis that the condition has no causative organism, which method comprises(1) contacting said sample essentially simultaneously with tagged antibodies to each of (a) fecal lactoferrin and (b) at least two organisms known to be causative of diarrhea in humans selected from among the group consisting of bacteria, viruses and protozoa; (2) contacting said sample and said tagged antibodies with a solid surface to which is immovably bound (a) a stripe of complementary antibodies to fecal lactoferrin and (b) stripes separate from the fecal lactoferrin complementary antibody stripe and from each other, of complementary antibodies to each of the organisms selected to be tested for in step (1) (b) (3) allowing sufficient incubation time to permit the formation of â€œsandwichesâ€  of tagged antibody and fixed antibody interlayered with any antigenic binding partner to each of the antibodies that was present in the sample; (4) inspecting the immovably fixed antibody stripes on the solid surface to detect which lines, if any exhibit color, radioactivity or magnetization imparted by the tag of the tagged antibody and indicative of the presence of fecal lactoferrin and/or of at least one of said organisms; and (5) from the observed result determining; (a) that the patient should be treated for infection by the particular organism, the antibodies to which formed a tagged â€œsandwichâ€  stripe, or (b) if none of the separate stripes of antibodies to said organisms formed a tagged â€œsandwichâ€  stripe but the fecal lactoferrin stripe did so, that further timely effort should be promptly made to locate the bacteria responsible for the patient's diarrhea, or (c) if neither the fecal lactoferrin antibody stripe nor the separate stripes of antibodies to organisms known to be causative of diarrhea formed a tagged â€œsandwichâ€  stripe, that the patient should be advised the diarrhea condition is not caused by bacteria or by any of the viral or protozoan organisms, antibodies for which were included in the test.