MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES

Recent Advances in Medical Diagnostic Techniques

Recent Advances in Medical Diagnostic Techniques

Introduction

Even though, before now complicated technologies in medicine are available in the system of health care of those countries that have been developed, more developments are persistently being fabricated. The methods of molecular analysis have increasingly occupied space in the area of diagnosis of diseases for excellent laboratory tools offer high sensitivity and applicability important in the characterization and classification of infectious agents. Molecular techniques currently used in routine diagnosis of diseases were initially developed in research in molecular genetics, virology, microbiology, immunology, cell biology, genetic diseases, among other areas. Most analyzes of molecular techniques began to be developed and implemented mainly in research on human diseases and in basic research involving studies with experimental models in laboratory and from these studies has been enhanced and are diagnostic. Technological advances in recent years, the quality and supply of inputs and equipment developed in research laboratories and biotechnology companies allowed some molecular techniques such as PCR, real time PCR and genomic sequencing were adopted as reliable diagnostic methodologies, rapid, highly sensitive and better reproducibility of results, enabling their use in diagnosis. Several molecular diagnostic assays have been published for many diseases and have become routine in public and private laboratories to diagnose disease.

Discussion

The molecular diagnostic assays based on detection and analysis of genome sequences and the products of gene expression, providing a detailed and accurate characterization and differentiation of microorganisms is not always possible with the serological diagnostic techniques or isolation of the infectious agent. Molecular methods have brought significant advances in the diagnosis of new variant of infectious agents in identifying determinants for differentiation between pathogenic and non-pathogenic agents, analyzes the evolution and geographical and temporal distribution of important pathogens causing diseases.

The PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and real-time PCR, the real-time PCR for quantitative analysis of gene expression, hybridization assays of RNA or DNA microarray technology for diagnosis or analysis of gene expression, sequencing by capillary electrophoresis DNA sequencing techniques and the new generation sequencing largely complete genomes, are examples of the basic tools of molecular biology more usually applied in research and are already or soon will be incorporated into routine diagnostic infectious diseases of poultry.

Recombinant DNA techniques are also applicable in the development of diagnostic methods and involve primarily the cloning of genes, or their insertion into prokaryotic or eukaryotic vectors, genetically modified to use different organisms. These vectors are used for in vitro synthesis of proteins encoded by cloned DNA. Proteins expressed in these systems are useful tools for developing immunodiagnostic methods more specific. Increasingly been developed and provided new and more complex arrays for gene expression, which no longer limited to prokaryotic organisms such as the expression of genes in Escherichia coli, which is widely used for nearly 10 years ago. There are currently raising the publications reporting new techniques of bioengineering human cells to develop cell lines with high capacity for protein production. The discovery of new supplements to cell culture systems and new ...