According to The New England Journal of Medicine, approximately 800,000 knee and hip replacement procedures are performed annually in the United States, and complications related to infections occur in approximately 2 percent of those procedures.
Under terms of the agreement, Abbott and GenLab will develop and commercialize the new assay for use on the PLEX-ID automated microbial identification system. In the United States, PLEX-ID is currently intended only for non-diagnostic use, but assays are now being developed for future clinical diagnostic uses. PLEX-ID is capable of generating diagnostic results within five to six hours, compared to other methods that may take several days.
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