aDivision of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California bDivision of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
Curr Opin Crit Care. 2013 Oct;19(5):432-9. doi: 10.1097/MCC.0b013e3283636b8c.
The advent of high-throughput whole-genome sequencing has the potential to revolutionize the conduct of outbreak investigation. Because of its ultimate resolution power for differentiating between closely related pathogen strains, whole-genome sequencing could augment the traditional epidemiologic investigations of infectious disease outbreaks.
The combination of whole-genome sequencing and intensive epidemiologic analysis provided new insights on the sources and transmission dynamics of large-scale epidemics caused by Escherichia coli and Vibrio cholerae, nosocomial outbreaks caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Mycobacterium abscessus, community-centered outbreaks caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and natural disaster-associated outbreaks caused by environmentally acquired molds.
When combined with traditional epidemiologic investigation, whole-genome sequencing has proven useful for elucidating the sources and transmission dynamics of disease outbreaks. Development of a fully automated bioinformatics pipeline for the analysis of whole-genome sequence data is much needed to make this powerful tool more widely accessible.
高通量全基因组测序的出现有可能彻底改变暴发调查的实施方式。由于其在区分密切相关的病原体菌株方面具有最终的分辨率,全基因组测序可以增强传染病暴发的传统流行病学调查。
全基因组测序与密集的流行病学分析相结合,为大肠杆菌和霍乱弧菌引起的大规模流行、耐甲氧西林金黄色葡萄球菌、肺炎克雷伯菌、脓肿分枝杆菌、社区为中心的结核分枝杆菌引起的医院感染暴发以及与自然灾害相关的环境获得性霉菌引起的暴发的来源和传播动态提供了新的见解。
当与传统的流行病学调查相结合时,全基因组测序已被证明有助于阐明疾病暴发的来源和传播动态。非常需要开发一个全自动的生物信息学管道来分析全基因组序列数据,以使这个强大的工具更广泛地被使用。