Novel Approaches to Prosthetic Joint Infection Diagnosis

We are developing a suite of approaches to detect bacteria in biofilms and applying these approaches to the diagnosis of prosthetic joint (and other biofilm-mediated) infection. We are using these methods to determine whether prosthetic joint infection, unrecognized by currently used methods, is being missed in clinical practice. One of the many approaches under study is rapid cycle quantitative broad-range real-time 16S ribosomal DNA polymerase chain reaction. We are also applying our biofilm detection techniques to breast implants.