Drone Transport of Microbes in Blood and Sputum Laboratory Specimens

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could potentially be used to transport microbiological specimens. To examine the impact of UAVs on microbiological specimens, blood and sputum culture specimens were seeded with usual pathogens and flown in a UAV for 30 ؎ 2 min. Times to recovery, colony counts, morphologies, and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS)-based identifications of the flown and stationary specimens were similar for all microbes studied.O ne of the factors that worsened the West African Ebola outbreak was the poor roads that hindered the transport of biological samples (1, 2). While the problem of poor road access is not new or unique to West Africa, there is now a relatively inexpensive solution with a relatively low barrier to implementation, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Because of this low barrier, the use of UAVs in industries such as the film, mining, and agriculture industries is expanding rapidly. These industries represent the majority of the 5,292 exemptions that the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority has granted so far (as of June 2016) for the use of UAVs (http://www.faa.gov/uas/beyond_the_basics/section_333/). One reason the use of UAVs in health care lags behind that in other industries is that transporting biological specimens requires additional specimen-specific validation (3-7). UAVs are a viable way to transport laboratory specimens only if the UAVs do not adversely affect the results for those specimens (3-7). For example, pneumatic tubes commonly used for in-house hospital transportation cause damage to various types of specimens (6, 7). The forces applied on a sample transported by a UAV include sudden accelerations and decelerations, exposure to ambient temperatures, and other impacts which cannot be predicted a priori. In addition, the work presented here will help to provide a template for future validation experiments using other UAVs, organisms, sample types, or environments. In this report, we examine the impact of drone transport on blood and sputum specimens (Fig. 1).Six sets of paired aerobic and anaerobic Bactec blood culture bottles were inoculated with 10 ml of whole blood from a commercial blood bank and spiked with one of four organisms (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, or Bacteroides fragilis), for a total of 12 bottles per organism. S. aureus and E. coli strains were clinical isolates. The S. pneumoniae (ATCC 49619) and B. fragilis (ATCC 25285) strains were standard type strains. Dilutions were made in Mueller-Hinton broth to achieve final concentrations of 10 CFU/ml of whole blood added (see Data Set S1 in the supplemental material). Plate counts were performed to verify anticipated spike levels.Pathogen-free (containing only normal flora), nonmucoidal sputa (such as those recovered from patients without cystic fibrosis) were collected from the Johns Hopkins Hospital clinical microbiology laboratory over a 10-day period. Samples from patients with a history of acid-fast bacillus ...

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