A Same-Day Test Is Finding Infections Doctors Were Missing
A test that sequences all the genetic material in a sample, rather than looking for an infection a clinician has guessed at in advance, found hidden and drug-resistant infections in critically ill children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. It is being rolled out to around thirty intensive care units across the United Kingdom.
The study covered 122 children in the hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit across 2024 and 2025, with respiratory samples from more than a hundred of them, and has now been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The advantage is breadth: a single sample is checked for bacteria, viruses and fungi at once, so the answer does not depend on the right question being asked first. Dr Sam Ray, a consultant in paediatric intensive care medicine at the hospital and a co-author, describes the effect in both directions: “The study has helped us to spot infections we would have missed, get children on the right treatment and stop antibiotics when we know they aren’t going to work.” That second half matters as much as the first, given what resistance costs. One case shows the stakes. Willow Crowther, ten, from Kent, developed pneumonia in March that triggered a seizure and multiple cardiac arrests; her mother was told she had a fifty-fifty chance and to bring the family to say goodbye. The test found a drug-resistant bacterial infection needing a different antibiotic. She spent several months in hospital and recovered.