Molecular diagnosis of infectious gastroenteritis

Infectious gastroenteritis is a very common disease. The main symptom is acute diarrhoea with or without vomiting. Due to the self-limiting character of the disease, therapy is primarily symptomatic and independent of the triggering pathogen. A pathogen diagnosis is only useful if the result of the diagnosis is expected to lead to a change in therapy or hygiene management. Conventional stool diagnostic workup is based on cultural, immunological and microscopic detection methods. In recent years, it has been extended by molecular methods. In particular, various manufacturers have brought so-called integrated gastroenteritis panels onto the market, in which a single stool sample can be tested simultaneously for a variety of bacterial, viral and protozoal pathogens using multiplex polymerase chain reaction. In this article, the significance of these methods compared to conventional methods of stool diagnostic workup is discussed on the basis of clinical studies. In summary, the molecular gastroenteritis panels show significantly higher detection rates with significantly shorter processing time. However, it is still questionable whether the improved detection rates lead to an improvement in therapy or hygiene management, so that their use is currently only recommended in special situations as an additional method to conventional diagnostic workup.