Multiplex PCR in Molecular Differential Diagnosis of Microbial Infections: Methods, Utility, and Platforms

We are entering the age of personalized medicine where treatments are designed to target specific causes, rather than a group of patients with similar symptoms. However, personalized medicine is impossible without a personalized diagnosis that considers all the possible causes of a person’s disease. Traditional molecular diagnostic methods, such as PCR and qPCR, cannot provide the necessary information to practice personalized medicine, because they cannot be multiplexed, allowing the detection of only one or a few (no more than 3) targets at a time in one sample. Practicing personalized medicine, therefore, requires multiplex PCR (mPCR), which can evaluate many molecular targets at once, in one reaction, from one sample.