A prospective multicentre evaluation of BioFire® Joint Infection Panel for the rapid microbiological documentation of acute arthritis

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the performance of the rapid syndromic BioFire® Joint Infection Panel (BF-JIP) to detect bacterial and fungal pathogens, as well as antibiotic resistance genes, directly in synovial fluid specimens collected from patients with acute arthritis. Methods: The study was conducted in six French bacteriological laboratories. To assess the performances of BF-JIP, results were compared with those of synovial fluid 14-day culture and, in case of discrepancy, with those of complementary molecular methods and intraoperative samples. A total of 308 synovial fluid specimens were tested after collection from 308 adults and children presenting with clinical and biological suspicion of acute arthritis; patients presenting with acute periprosthetic joint infection were included according to the European Bone and Joint Infection Society 2021 criteria. Results: Only one specimen failed (no result). On the basis of the consolidated data, the BF-JIP was concordant with the 14-day culture in 280 (91.2%) of the 307 specimens finally included in the study. The positive percentage agreement was 84.9% (95% CI, 78.8–89.8%) and the negative percentage agreement was 100% (95% CI, 97.2–100%). The positive predictive value was extremely high (100%; 95% CI, 97.6–100%), whereas the negative predictive value was lower (82.6%; 95% CI, 75.7–88.2%), partially explained by the missing target species in the panel. Discussion: The BF-JIP showed high performances to detect pathogens involved in acute arthritis.