ArticleMicrobiology spectrum2026
Advancing antimicrobial therapy: evaluating the ASTar (Q-linea) System for rapid AST in Gram-negative bloodstream infections.
Article in Microbiology spectrum, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bloodstream infections (BSIs) caused by Gram-negative bacteria are a leading cause of sepsis and mortality, underscoring the need for rapid, reliable antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) to guide targeted therapy. We evaluated the analytical performance, turnaround time, and potential clinical impact of the ASTar System (Q-linea), an automated rapid phenotypic AST platform that reports minimum inhibitory concentration-based results directly from positive blood cultures. A total of 76 prospective clinical and 32 antibiotic-resistant specimens from the CDC & FDA AR Isolate Bank selected to represent diverse and well-characterized resistance profiles were tested and compared with the Standard-of-Care (SoC) MicroScan-WalkAway method using 2021 FDA STIC breakpoints. ASTar demonstrated essential and categorical agreement of 98.4% and 99.3% with SoC for clinical isolates, and 95.4% and 97.0% for CDC & FDA AR Isolate Bank specimens, respectively. The median turnaround time for ASTar results was 13.1 h compared with 51.2 h for SoC ( IMPORTANCE: Delays in antimicrobial susceptibility testing for Gram-negative bloodstream infections prolong empiric broad-spectrum therapy and can worsen clinical outcomes. This study presents data on the analytical performance, turnaround time, and potential clinical impact of the ASTar System for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Gram-negative bloodstream infections. The comparison of ASTar results with a Standard-of-Care method offers data to support clinical laboratories in assessing rapid phenotypic AST platforms, such as ASTar, their role in antimicrobial stewardship, and possible workflow adjustments for faster, targeted therapy in the management of Gram-negative bloodstream infections.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.