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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Antibiotic Resistance and New Antimicrobial drugs
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1526087
This article is part of the Research Topic Improved Diagnostic Microbiology for Efficient AMR Surveillance View all articles

Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing for Antimicrobial Resistance Detection in Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia

Provisionally accepted
Yuting Li Yuting Li 1Yan Fang Jiang Yan Fang Jiang 1Hao Liu Hao Liu 2Yao Fu Yao Fu 1Junying Lu Junying Lu 1Hongyan Li Hongyan Li 1Lulu Sheng Lulu Sheng 1Dejian Gu Dejian Gu 2Dong Zhang Dong Zhang 1*
  • 1 First Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
  • 2 Geneplus-Beijing, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) carries a high mortality rate in the intensive care units (ICUs) due to its widespread drug resistance. Traditional microbial cultures limited by speed and sensitivity, are often unable to help clinicians make effective diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a rapid and accurate test that can identify both pathogens and their antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to improve the prognosis of patients with VAP. Study design: We analyzed samples from ICU patients with suspected VAP using both microbial tests and targeted next-generation sequencing (tNGS), comparing the results of tNGS pathogen and AMR detection against microbial culture and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). Results: Involving 199 patients with suspected VAP, tNGS showed a sensitivity rate of 98.98% for pathogen identification. While the sensitivity rate of microbial culture was just 66.84%. Additionally, tNGS performed almost half the turnaround time of microbial culture (1.66 days vs 3.00 days). For AMR, the overall consistency between AST and tNGS was 79.31%. The great performance particularly exhibited for Acinetobacter baumannii carbapenem-penicillin-cephamycin resistance. Conclusion: tNGS excels in identifying pathogens and AMR. Its rapid workflow makes it ideal for managing critically ill patients, enhancing treatment precision, and reducing antibiotic misuse.

    Keywords: Targeted next-generation sequencing, ventilator-associated pneumonia, pathogen, antimicrobial resistance, Intensive Care Unit

    Received: 11 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Li, Jiang, Liu, Fu, Lu, Li, Sheng, Gu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dong Zhang, First Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.