Mass spectrometric sepsis diagnosis without blood culture

The invention relates to methods and apparatus for rapid detection and rapid mass spectrometric identification of microbial pathogens in blood, but also in other body fluids. The invention recognizes that blood is not a good environment for the cultivation of microbes and provides a method that (a) the human particles in body fluids, such as erythrocytes and leukocytes in the blood, largely destroyed or dissolved, without affecting the viability of the microbes , (b) separating the microbial pathogens from the liquid, (c) they propagated in a nutrient broth, which does not contain the antimicrobial components of the body fluids, (d) they are separated from the culture broth, and (e) the microbes on the basis of a mass spectrum of microbes proteins identified. The dissolution of the human particles also releases nesting in macrophages microbes. The cultivation in an optically clear, optimally composite broth not only accelerates the proliferation of microbes over all other cultivation methods, but also makes it possible to track their growth in volume measuring starting as low microbial density. This allows on the one hand carried out at the earliest possible point in time and on the other hand, a positive detection of microbes are achieved well before their identification, which may be lifesaving for patients the identification by mass spectrometry; thirdly, it can also be started early with the determination of resistance.