Application and consideration of metagenomic next-generation sequencing technology in the diagnosis of insect-borne diseases / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Insect-borne diseases are serious life-threatening infectious diseases. Rapid and accurate etiological diagnosis are the premise of timely and effective clinical treatments, reducing mortality and sequelae. Laboratory diagnoses of insect-borne diseases mainly focus on targeted serological detection and polymerase chain reaction, which is difficult to detect rare insect borne pathogens. At present, the metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) technology has moved from scientific research into clinical application. The detection of nucleic acid sequences of all organisms in infected samples by mNGS exhibited significant advantages in the diagnosis and traceability of rare pathogens. But at the same time, mNGS is also suffered with challenges such as background microbial interference, false results caused by database restrictions, pathogen resistance and host immune status information that are urgently needed for clinical treatments. This article systematically summarized applications of mNGS in the diagnosis of insect-borne pathogens and the challenges and difficulties it faces. With the continuous optimization of mNGS in the detection, it will bring new development and innovation to the etiology diagnosis of clinical infectious diseases.