Role of Molecular Epidemiology in Infectious Disease Surveillance

Abstract

Molecular epidemiology is progressively a vast area of research and now molecular biology techniques have become increasingly integrated into the practice of infectious disease epidemiology. By definition molecular epidemiology is molecular strain-typing or we can say fingerprinting techniques regardless any epidemiologic application. Molecular is basically the use of the techniques of molecular biology and the epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease occurrence in human populations. The benefits and challenges of applying these techniques to disease and their affected host is the core which gets served by molecular epidemiologist.

Integration of Molecular Methods into Microbiological Diagnostics

“…In addition, other challenging calls for concern are the seropositivity (the quality or state of being seropositive, of having blood serum that tests positive for given pathogen) in Chlamydia sp. and the very slow growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis also catalazed the need for a more sensitive techniques [2,14]. In a paper on 'Is There a Fungus Among Us -An Update on Diagnostic Strategies' , PCR methods shows an increased 90% sensitivity while 50% for culture methods.…”

“…Apart from its health complications, nosocomial infections also cause an increase in the cost of intensive care and prolong hospitalization by weeks or more [4]. Although with conventional methods, the study of epidemiology on nosocomial infections is next to impossible, with the invention of the molecular methods of strain typing; a positive difference have been seen [4,14]. The introduction of molecular biology methods that can detect DNA and RNA (nucleic acid probing and amplification) will no doubt help in strain typing for the types of nosocomial occuring at a particular time [1,6].…”