Nat Med: Scientists have successfully used macro genome sequencing technology to quickly identify pathogens in human body fluids

16, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Nature Medicine, scientists from the University of California and others found that macrogenome sequencing techniques could be used to quickly detect pathogens in human body fluid samples.
The current way to diagnose an infection is to collect blood or tissue samples from patients and send them to the lab for testing, which in most cases falls into two categories, one is to culture to see if viruses, fungi or bacteria will reproduce, and the other is to use PCR technology to detect DNA to identify the presence of foreign pathogens;
Photo Source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In this study, researchers say that using macro-genome sequencing technology can speed up the identification of infectious factors, in which researchers first extract genetic material from samples such as urine, pus, and cerebrospinal fluid, and then sequence it so they can use macro-genome sequencing to quickly identify bacteria, fungi, or infectious viruses in the sample. In the
article, the researchers collected samples of various body fluids from 158 patients, most of whom were admitted to hospital, and 127 of whom had been diagnosed with a specific pathogen, nine of whom were found not to be infected, but the PCR tested positive.
To test the samples, the researchers used a new generation of macrogenomic sequencing techniques (mNGS, metagenomic next-generation sequencing), which is more accurate and faster than other methods, and when using sequencing techniques from Illumina, bacterial infections Diagnostic sensitivity is 79.2%, specific performance is 90.6%, and when sequencing technology from nanopoore is used, the sensitivity to bacterial infection diagnosis is 75%, the specific performance is 81.4%, and such tests can be completed in a matter of hours.
() Original source: Gu, W., Deng, X., Lee, M. et al. Rapid pathogen detection by metagenomic next-generation sequencing of infected body fluids. Nat Med (2020). doi:10.1038/s41591-020-1105-z