Future of diagnostic microbiology

Abstract

Diagnostic Microbiology is the tool that makes it possible to identify the exact etiology of infectious diseases and the most optimal therapy at the level of individual patients as well as communities. Conventional methods require time to grow the microbes in vitro under specific conditions and not all microbes are easily cultivable. This is followed by biochemical methods for identification which also require hours and sometimes days. Transport of the specimens under less than ideal conditions, prior use of antibiotics and small number of organisms are among the factors that render culture-based methods less reliable. Newer methods depend on amplification of nucleic acids followed by use of probes for identification. This mitigates the need for higher microbial load, presence of metabolically active viable organisms and shortens the time to reporting. These methods can be used to detect antibiotic resistance genes directly from the specimen and help direct targeted therapy. Since these methods will not fulfill all the diagnostic needs, a second approach is being used to shorten the time to identification after the organism has already grown. Mass spectrometry and bioinformatics are the tools making this possible. This review gives a historical perspective on diagnostic microbiology, discusses the pitfalls of current methodology and provides an overview of newer and future methods.

Ancient permafrost staphylococci carry antibiotic resistance genes

“…Many genes and gene mutations are known to be associated with bacterial pathogenicity or antibiotic resistance [42,43]. We performed a search for such genes in the examined ancient strains to elucidate whether these genes were present in Staphylococcus genomes 3 million years ago.…”

Bacterial infiltration in structural heart valve disease

“…Since the 19th century, the gold standard for the detection of bacterial infection has been the cultivation of bacterial pathogens from blood or tissue samples. 12 Despite findings of a relationship between bacterial infiltration and sVHD, verification using microbiological culture is not a routine clinical method in this patient population. 13 Giladi and colleagues, 14 Chuard and colleagues, 15 and Campbell and colleagues 16 isolated bacteria from the heart valves in 11% to 17% of sVHD patients, but lacking structural and ultrastructural validation, they concluded that this was a contamination.…”

Aspects of microbiological diagnosis: public opinion research and solutions within public professional organization

“…2). Данное распределение хорошо отражает общероссийские и общемировые тенденции по закономерному включению молекулярно-генетических методов в набор инструментов бактериологической (микробиологической) лаборатории [5,6]. Таким образом, по нашему мнению, следует учитывать технологическое развитие отрасли в этом направлении и уделять этим методам особое внимание как в рамках модернизации нормативной базы (в том числе включение некоторых современных методов в стандартный арсенал работы микробиологов), так и содействуя расширению образовательной программы для микробиологов по изучению данных методик.…”