Study Findings from Nanjing University Broaden Understanding of Pulmonary Aspergillosis (The value of metagenomic next-generation sequencing with different nucleic acid extracting methods of cell-free DNA or whole-cell DNA in the diagnosis of...).

A study conducted by researchers at Nanjing University in China explores the use of metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) as a diagnostic technique for pulmonary aspergillosis. The study compares the diagnostic value of mNGS with different nucleic acid extraction methods, specifically whole-cell DNA (wcDNA) and cell-free DNA (cfDNA), in detecting pathogens in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). The results show that BALF-mNGS (cfDNA, wcDNA) outperforms conventional microbiological tests (CMTs) in detecting microorganisms associated with pulmonary aspergillosis. The researchers suggest that incorporating BALF-mNGS with CMTs improves diagnostic precision, with BALF-cfDNA showing greater clinical value than BALF-wcDNA. [Extracted from the article]