Justyna Paleczny, graduate of medical analysis of the Medical University of Wroclaw, was awarded in the National Competition for her Master’s Thesis in the field of medicine in 2018.

In the paper “Evaluation of the usefulness of the Solid-Phase Micro Extraction technique for differentiation between methicillin-resistant and methicillin-resistant staphylococci”, she checked whether on the basis of differences in volatile metabolite profiles, staphylococcus aureus is sensitive to methicillin and can be distinguished from strains resistant to this antibiotic.

In her research she used the fast and cheap Solid Phase MicroExtraction (SPME) method. In today’s methods used for the diagnosis of sepsis, the waiting time for the result is up to 72 hours. The SPME method can shorten this time up to 2 hours after collection. Such a faster diagnosis reduces the patient’s death risk and limits the use of antibiotics with a broad spectrum of activity.