title: PNA FISH: present and future impact on patient management.
abstract: Inappropriate and inaccurate antimicrobial therapy can lead to adverse patient outcomes and also the development of antimicrobial resistance. Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) gives rapid reporting with highly sensitive and specific results to clinicians within 3 h after blood cultures turn positive, thereby offering targeted therapeutics where necessary. It is simple to establish compared with real-time PCR and has resulted in significant cost savings for hospitals. PNA FISH is a promising future technology for the microbiology laboratory that will impact on patient management and clinical guidelines. This article will review the clinical data supporting these new technologies.
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland, Division of Infectious Diseases, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. gforrest@medicine.umaryland.edu
authors.forename: Graeme N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Forrest
mesh_terms: D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000191:economics / Q000628:therapy*; D002177:Candidiasis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000191:economics / Q000628:therapy*; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D017404:In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D020135:Peptide Nucleic Acids; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000639:trends
chemical_list: D020135:Peptide Nucleic Acids