Infectious diseases pose a major threat to public health and result in high morbidity and mortality. There is a need to rapidly diagnose and treat these infections to improve public health. For that purpose, a detailed understanding of interaction and host and pathogen (viruses, bacteria parasites fungi) is required.

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Automated nucleic acid (NA) extraction and analysis technologies will be hugely advantageous when they are required to be performed on large scale, as seen in SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Lab automation in clinical microbiology lab can result in elimination of numerous processing steps from the workflow cascade, e.g., transport of plates to inoculation area, incubator, or reading desks or labeling and streaking of plates.

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Staphylococcus aureus infections affect up to 20% to 30% of the human population worldwide. Staphylococcus is a family of bacteria, derived from the Greek word – Staphylo meaning grape-like, and coccus meaning berries. Sir Alexander Ogston discovered the Staphylococcus family in 1880 from pus in the injury. Later, Friedrich Julius in 1884, identified different species of Staphylococcus bacteria1. Staphylococcus aureus is a bacteria that render positive result on Gram stain test. Gram stain test is a common type of staining method to find out the presence of a particular species of bacteria. 

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Are you coughing, sneezing, having a mild fever, and feeling a little tired? These symptoms can be from allergies or a common cold. Still, there is a risk that they may be due to a respiratory infection because the respiratory tract is the most common route of microbial entry. Early diagnosis and treatment of respiratory diseases can be life-saving. Sometimes, respiratory infections (pneumonia, tuberculosis) can be life-threatening if not diagnosed and treated promptly.

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Do you know that, on average, almost 35,000 Americans die every year just because of misusing antibiotics? The horrific tale of antibiotic misuse is not a concern in just the US anymore. Instead, it has become a global issue that poses severe threats to global health, food security, and development.

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CNS infection – A devastating and deadly illness Infections of the central nervous system (CNS, which consists of the brain and the spinal cord) are severe and devastating diseases caused by pathogens, e.g., bacteria, fungi, viruses, or parasites capable of invading the CNS through different routes1.

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The validation of diagnostic assays is a long procedure of inter-related processes that assures all steps and reagents are optimised. The scope of this procedure is to detect the analyte with accuracy and precision and identify the thresholds for each parameter. Three areas must be assessed: reproducibility (i.e., the test always shows the same result for the same sample), precision (i.e., the variability within results), and accuracy (i.e., the extent to which the results reflect the true situation). Once these are known, another three parameters need to be measured: scientific validity, analytical and clinical performance, guaranteeing data robustness and reliability. The comparisons are done against a widely approved older technique, called “golden standard”.

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Every year, about 48 million people are diagnosed with sepsis worldwide. 1 out of 5 people with sepsis die – and this represents 18 to 20% of annual global deaths. Almost half of these are children, with neonatal and pediatric sepsis accounting for 20 million cases. These are devastating numbers. The Asia-Pacific region has the highest incidence of sepsis in the world – estimates have revealed that up to 1600 per 100,000 people are afflicted with the disease. The death rate in these countries reach as high as 35%.

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Is there a causative relation? What is endometriosis? Endometriosis is the chronic inflammation of the endometrium, the cellular lining of the uterus. It is considered a chronic gynaecological disease and it is more common than you think!

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The current COVID-19 pandemic made evident to all that Health is linked to Economy with tighter links than we might think. Health is not the power drainer of national budgets worldwide; it is also the stabilizer of economic growth and abundance. It is a reciprocal equation and is not only limited to humans. A deadly herd epidemic is enough to devastate a nation’s economy for years; an infected grooming product is enough to bring down big economic giants; a food poisoning can defame a large food chain and result in huge pay-outs.

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“Sepsis is the final common pathway to death for severe infectious diseases,” WHO (2020). Sepsis is responsible for almost 20% of all deaths worldwide. This was higher than deaths caused by cancer in 2020.3 Even if patients survive to live another day, they have risks of developing long-term consequences of neurological, psychiatric, and functional disabilities. Sepsis costs a total of $13,4 billion in 2018, more than twice its cost in 2012 as reported by US Medicare.6 Sepsis is undoubtedly still a complex challenge up till now.

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Sepsis is an acute life-threatening condition characterized by organ dysfunction due to a dysregulated immune response to pathogens. It along with other bloodstream infections (BSI) represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality, affecting over 13 million people worldwide and killing 20 to 50% of severely affected patients, as well as a source of immense economic burden. What is even more concerning is the observed increase in the incidence of sepsis and other bloodstream infections that has occurred in the past several decades, attributed partly to the failure of empiric antibiotic regimens as a result of growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

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Candida spp., commensal yeasts that colonize in our gut and on our skin could become lethal pathogens when they overgrow and disseminate into our bloodstream and deep-seated organs (lung, liver, spleen, kidneys, bone, or eye) and then cause invasive candidiasis (IC). Bloodstream infection (BSI), also called candidemia and internal organ infection are two common forms of IC which are the predominant fungal hospital-acquired infections.

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