Newer approaches to diagnostic tests for gastrointestinal infections

The diagnosis of gastrointestinal diseases has undergone dramatic changes with the introduction of molecular methods to clinical laboratory medicine. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods have increased the sensitivity, speed, and accuracy of laboratory diagnosis as compared with more traditional methods, Despite these advantages, PCR has had little impact on smaller clinical laboratories because of problems in sample preparation, concerns about reproducibility and sample contamination, and the inconvenience of detecting the PCR product by gel electrophoresis, New methods of sample preparation and the availability of commercial kits for performing PCR and detecting the product will minimize these difficulties. The application of molecular techniques to laboratory medicine has also created the field of molecular epidemiology and subtyping, which is making enormous contributions to understanding the role of specific subtypes in human disease.