Abstract

Moving Toward the Future in the Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases

Po-Yu Liu, Infectious Diseases Physician , Taichung Veterans General Hospital

Despite our socioeconomic advance today, humans remain vulnerable to infectious diseases, the leading causes of mortalities worldwide. Globalization and climate changes have driven re-distribution of emerging pathogens. The importance of the identification of causative organism cannot be overemphasized in infectious diseases, especially in light of the highly diverse nature of infectious diseases. However, conventional culture-based techniques are laborious, time-consuming and could be highly biased among batches. Rapid progress in development of sequencing technologies over past two decades, however, now allows us to identify microorganisms without being discouraged by inborn weakness of culture-based techniques. Metagenomics, a direct sequencing tool, characterizes genes and genomes that present in complex microbial ecosystems and offers us an access to understanding the vast unculturable species. With these emerging technologies, it time to open up a new chapter in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases.