Abstract
This study aims to validate the current diagnostic method for the clinical detection of gastroenteritis. We analyzed 400 stool samples to detect three of the most common enteropathogens: Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., and Yersinia enterocolitica. All specimens were tested with a routine clinical diagnosis algorithm and with five real-time PCR assays. A total of 98 specimens (24.5%) were positive for enteropathogens. We found 24 samples positive for Salmonella enterica, 71 positive for Campylobacter spp., and 4 positive for Yersinia enterocolitica. All evaluated methods exhibited a good performance in identifying Salmonella and Yersinia enterocolitica, being the highest positive percent agreement (PPA) value of 95.8% and 100%, respectively. The clinical algorithm showed the highest PPA value identifying Salmonella, due to the enrichment in selenite broth. However, the evaluated methods showed notable differences in the identification of Campylobacter species, obtaining a wide range of PPA values: 59.2%–100%. The clinical algorithm showed the lowest PPA value since it was only able to detect Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli species. This study revealed the importance of implementing the real-time PCR technique in a clinical algorithm: it improved the accuracy of the diagnosis and provided results in a shorter time compared to routine clinical methods.
Highlights
This study aims to validate the current diagnostic method for the clinical detection of gastroenteritis
Www.nature.com/scientificreports clinical laboratories[4,5,6,7,8], due to their high sensitivity and their ability to screen a considerable number of enteropathogens simultaneously
The samples were randomly chosen from specimens received with a request for routine detection of enteropathogens
Summary
This study aims to validate the current diagnostic method for the clinical detection of gastroenteritis. CIDTs ( gastrointestinal panels, based on multiplex real-time PCR technology (qPCR)) are increasingly implemented in www.nature.com/scientificreports clinical laboratories[4,5,6,7,8], due to their high sensitivity and their ability to screen a considerable number of enteropathogens simultaneously. This approach avoids complex algorithms and reduces the hands-on time. This study aimed to compare five molecular CIDTs, based on qPCR technology, to culture-dependent techniques to evaluate their performance and determine the most suitable alternative for routine clinical diagnoses of enteropathogens
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