Pathogen exposureNew technology gives early warning of exposure to disease-causing pathogens
Overt symptoms of many diseases often do not manifest until days after a person’s initial exposure to the causative pathogen, typically a virus or bacteria. By then, the disease may have progressed to a level at which the benefits of patient treatment are diminished and the likelihood of pathogen exposure among a wider population is high. Doctors and public health officials would welcome warnings that enable them to begin early mitigation and containment of disease outbreaks. A newly developed algorithm uses non-invasive physiological data to predict the probability of viral or bacterial exposures.
Overt symptoms of many diseases often do not manifest until days after a person’s initial exposure to the causative pathogen, typically a virus or bacteria. By then, the disease may have progressed to a level at which the benefits of patient treatment are diminished and the likelihood of pathogen exposure among a wider population is high. Doctors and public health officials would welcome warnings that enable them to begin early mitigation and containment of disease outbreaks.
Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the National Institutes of Health Integrated Research Facility (NIH-IRF), and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) are developing a technology that may provide those early warnings. The PRE-Symptomatic AGent Exposure Detection (PRESAGED) algorithm uses real-time physiological data, such as heart electrical activity (electrocardiography, ECG), breathing rate, and temperature, to calculate the probability that a person has been exposed to a virus or bacteria. PRESAGED is designed to run on data collected from noninvasive medical sensors—for example, wearable electrocardiographs (also known as Holter monitors).
The objectives of the PRESAGED research, which is sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, are to provide both effective individual patient care resulting from early treatment and faster, more confident implementation of public health measures, such as isolation, to improve overall population health by blunting epidemics. “The message that ‘earlier is better’ is found throughout medicine, and only recently have small, wearable medical devices enabled the persistent surveillance needed for detecting pathogen exposure. The earlier you know you’ll be sick, the faster you can begin to respond, and perhaps avoid the worst of the illness completely,” said Albert Swiston, a principal researcher on the PRESAGED project. “Earlier detection of epidemics on the per-person scale also offers an entirely new method for public health surveillance and countermeasures,” he added.
