ImmunoCard STAT! EHEC

The First Rapid assay for the Detection of EHEC Shiga Toxins

EHEC Clinical Features
Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) cause epidemic and sporadic gastrointestinal infections worldwide. Some authors have reported EHEC to be the 3rd most frequent cause of bacterial gastrointestinal infection after Salmonella and Campylobacter.
Especially in children and the elderly EHEC infection is responsible for severe consequences like bloody diarrhea or Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), a serious disease which is the principal cause of acute renal failure often requiring dialysis or transplantation. Shiga toxin production is the main virulence factor causing these complications.
E. coli O157:H7 is the most commonly reported serotype, but many other harmful strains like O26, O111, O103 and O145 are increasingly found and now represent the majority of isolates in most European countries.
Since EHEC infection is life-threatening and a specific therapy is not available, a rapid diagnosis is important to avoid empiric antibiotic treatment, which is associated with worse clinical outcome.

EHEC diagnosis: importance of detecting Shiga Toxin 1 and 2
The most common diagnostic test, culture on Sorbitol-McConkey Agar (SMAC), only detects the O157:H7 serotype, but the sensitivity and the specificity are rather low.
All non-O157:H7 strains are missed by using the SMAC culture.
A rapid and sensitive diagnosis of EHEC infections is fundamental for a proper patient management and for preventing the spread of the disease.
The Center for Disease Control (Atlanta, USA) recommends screening for Shiga toxins all specimens submitted for enteric pathogens detection.

ImmunoCard STAT! EHEC
The new ImmunoCard STAT! EHEC is the first one-step 20 minutes rapid test for the detection of Shiga Toxin 1 and 2 produced by Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli in human specimens.
The test is performed on McConkey broth overnight enrichment of fecal specimens and detects all Toxigenic serotypes with 92% sensitivity and 100% specificity.
The separate result for Toxin 1 and 2 is useful as the latter is associated to more severe clinical symptoms.

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