A Comparison of Blood Pathogens Detection Among Droplet Digital PCR, Metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing, and Blood Culture in Critically ill Patients With Suspected Bloodstream Infections. Comparison of methods for blood pathogens detection

Metagenomic next generation sequencing (mNGS) and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) have recently shown great potential in the detection of infectious microorganisms from whole blood via a culture-independent strategy. They both greatly improved the positive pathogen detection rates than traditional culture-based methods. However, there is no comparation between these two different approaches to guide a reasonable choice in clinical applications. In current study, a head-to-head comparative analysis was performed in the detection of infectious pathogens directly from whole blood.