Robin Patel, M.D., and team study the use of transcriptomic-based cellular deconvolution to identify infectious and non-infectious causes of failed joint replacement surgeries 

While periprosthetic joint infections are a rare complication of knee and hip replacement surgeries, their effects can be life-threatening for patients. To make matters worse, they can be difficult to distinguish from other causes of failed arthroplasties.

Now, new exploratory research by Robin Patel, M.D., a physician in Mayo Clinic’s Divisions of Clinical Microbiology and Public Health, Infectious Diseases and Occupational Medicine, and Director and Co-Director of Mayo Clinic’s Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory and Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory, respectively, and Cody R. Fisher, a Ph.D. student in the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, has found that the use of a “transcriptomic-based cellular deconvolution tool” called CIBERSORTx could potentially be used to detect infectious and non-infectious causes of failed joint replacement surgeries.

Read the full study in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.

Click here to learn more about Mayo Clinic’s Infectious Diseases Laboratory and Dr. Patel’s research into improving the detection and diagnosis of prosthetic joint infections.