Are molecular methods helpful for the diagnosis of infection and for the prediction of its antimicrobial resistance?

Infections produced by (), a spiral Gram-negative bacterium, can cause chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer, and gastric cancer. Antibiotic therapy is the most effective treatment for infection at present. However, owing to the increasing antibiotic resistance of strains, it has become a serious threat to human health. Therefore, the accurate diagnosis of infections and its antibiotic resistance markers is of great significance. Conventional microbiological diagnosis of is based on culture; however, successful isolation of from gastric biopsy specimens is a challenging task affected by several factors and has limitations in terms of the time of response. To improve conventional methods, some molecular techniques, such as PCR, have been recently used in both invasive and non-invasive diagnosis, enabling simultaneous detection of and point mutations responsible for frequent antibiotic resistance. The advantages and disadvantages of molecular methods, mainly PCR, versus conventional culture for the identification and the detection of antibiotic resistance are discussed. As expected, the combination of both diagnostic methods will lead to the most efficient identification of the strains and the resistance patterns.