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FOCUS ON RESEARCH Published at www.nejm.org February 6, 2008 (10.1056/NEJMp0708085)

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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How, in this era of molecular diagnostic tests, can we best determine whether there is a causal relationship between the presence of a genetic signature of an infectious agent and disease? In recent years, molecular techniques have been applied successfully in the identification of infectious agents such as Borna virus, Kaposi's sarcoma–associated herpesvirus (human herpesvirus 8), West Nile virus, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus.¹ Currently, the majority of surveillance and discovery efforts use methods based on sequences of known agents — namely, competitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and microarrays. Such efforts fail, however, when the agents in . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

This article (10.1056/NEJMp0708085) was published at www.nejm.org on February 6, 2008. It will appear in the March 6 issue of the Journal.

Dr. Whitley is a professor of pediatrics, microbiology, medicine, and neurosurgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham.

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