The Mass Spectrometry Revolution in Clinical Microbiology Part 2 Emerging Applications

Recent expansion of these MS platforms in clinical microbiology include identification of bacteria direct from positive blood cultures without the need for subculturing. Emerging applications for additional organism groups, strain typing, outbreak identification, pathogen detection and identification in tissue, as well as ambient MS and breath-based respiratory infections are in earlier stages of their development but promise tremendous potential in infectious disease diagnostics. If the next decades continue to see the progress of the past two decades, MS may become one of the most important, if not the most important, diagnostic tool in infectious diseases.