Urinary tract infections, or UTIs, are a common health problem, especially for women. About half of all women will have at least one UTI in their life.
One type of UTI, called cystitis, affects the bladder and can cause pain, burning when urinating, and a frequent urge to go to the bathroom.
Treating UTIs is becoming harder because some bacteria are no longer responding to common antibiotics. This is called antibiotic resistance, and it makes infections more difficult to cure.
Now, researchers from ETH Zurich and Balgrist University Hospital in Switzerland have created a new test that may help solve this problem. This test can quickly and accurately find the bacteria causing a UTI.
The test uses something called bacteriophages, or phages for short. These are tiny viruses that only attack and kill bacteria—not human cells. Scientists have known about phages for over 100 years, but interest in them dropped when antibiotics became widely used. Now, with antibiotic resistance on the rise, phages are getting attention again.
In this new study, scientists led by Professor Martin Loessner changed the phages to make them better at detecting the bacteria responsible for UTIs.
When these engineered phages find their target bacteria in a urine sample, they give off a light signal. This glow tells doctors which bacteria are present, and the result comes in less than four hours. That’s a big improvement over current tests, which can take several days.
The researchers also improved the phages so they don’t just detect bacteria—they help fight them too. The modified phages release special proteins that help kill the bacteria, making them more powerful.
Before this test can be used in clinics and hospitals, it needs to go through clinical trials. These trials will test how well the method works with real patients. One of the researchers, Matthew Dunne, explained that more research is still needed, and there may be rules that have to change before this new test becomes common.
If successful, this new approach could make diagnosing and treating UTIs much faster. It could also help doctors choose the right antibiotic from the start. This would not only relieve patient discomfort sooner but also help reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics—a key step in slowing down antibiotic resistance.
This breakthrough offers hope for better care for millions of people who suffer from UTIs. Instead of waiting in pain for days, patients could soon get fast answers and quicker relief.
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