Study Evaluates Performance Of mNGS Test For Diagnosis Of Central Nervous System Infections

HealthDay (11/12, Thompson) reports that researchers have adapted metagenomic next-generation sequencing or mNGS, a genetic test that has been in use for more than a decade to identify pathogens in spinal fluid, “to identify germs in respiratory fluid that can cause pneumonia, according to a new study published...in the journal Nature Medicine.” The new respiratory version of the “test requires just 30 minutes of hands-on time before robots and AI take over, and can return results in time to treat dangerous infections, researchers said.” Between 2016 and 2023, researchers “analyzed nearly 5,000 spinal fluid samples with the test, more than 14% of which turned out to have an infection.” They found “the test accurately identified the pathogen in spinal fluid 86% of the time.”