WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have developed a genomic testing which can rapidly detect almost any kind of pathogen - virus, bacteria, fungus or parasite.
The metagenomic next-generation sequencing or mNGS testing, originally developed to analyze cerebrospinal fluid, considers all the nucleic acids, RNA and DNA.
'Our technology is deceptively simple,' said senior author Charles Chiu, professor of laboratory medicine and infectious diseases at UCSF.
'By replacing multiple tests with a single test, we can take the lengthy guesswork out of diagnosing and treating infections.'
Published in Nature Medicine, the study considered 4,828 mNGS tests conducted between June 2016 and April 2023. Of the total samples, 14.4 percent had infection. From this, the accuracy rate of the test in identifying the pathogen was 86 percent.
'Our mNGS test performs better than any other category of test for neurologic infections,' Chiu said, 'The results support its use as a critical part of the diagnostic armamentarium for physicians who are working up patients with infectious diseases.'
The researchers also analyzed laboratory and clinical metadata from a subset of UCSF patient samples from 1,053 individuals. The test detected 180 cases with at least one microorganism.
Moreover, the team demonstrated that the test could detect respiratory viruses with pandemic potential, such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza A and B, and RSV in less than a day.
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