Metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing applied in diagnosis of osteoarticular nontuberculous mycobacterial infection / 中华创伤骨科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the value of metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing (mNGS) in etiological diagnosis of osteoarticular nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infection.Methods:From January 2014 to October 2019, 119 patients were definitely diagnosed as osteoarticular infection at Department of Bone Tumor & Joint Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital to Fujian Medical University. All of them underwent conventional culture followed by mNGS to screen out those with NTM infection by the etiological testing. Optimized culture was conducted for NTM infections. Demographic data, and results of conventional culture, mNGS and optimized culture were recorded for patients with NTM infection.Results:mNGS showed that 12 of the 119 patients with osteoarticular infection (12/119, 10.1%) had NTM infection. They were 6 males and 6 females aged from 31 to 82 years(average, 51.1 years). There were 5 cases of slowly-growing mycobacterial type and 7 cases of rapidly-growing mycobacterial type. The positive rate of primary culture was only 16.7% (2/12) by the conventional culture, but increased to 66.7% (8/12) by the optimized culture. The positive rate of optimized culture was 100% (7/7) for the rapidly-growing mycobacterial type and 20% (1/5) for the slowly-growing mycobacterial type.Conclusion:As the positive rate of conventional culture is low for patients with osteoarticular NTM infection, mNGS is superior due to its advantage in accurate etiological diagnosis, especially for that of rapidly-growing mycobacterial type.