Digital PCR Enters the Clinical Microbiology Lab: Advantages Over qPCR
This review compares digital PCR with quantitative PCR for clinical microbiology applications, highlighting dPCR's advantages: absolute quantification without standard curves, improved precision, better performance in the presence of inhibitors, and more accurate quantitation at low amplification efficiency. These properties make dPCR particularly suited for viral load monitoring, transplant diagnostics, and low-copy-number pathogen detection in the clinical laboratory.
The original study
Applications of Digital PCR for Clinical Microbiology.
- Authors
- Kuypers J, Jerome KR
- Journal
- Journal of clinical microbiology
- Type
- Journal Article, Review
- PMID
- 28298452
Original abstract
Digital PCR (dPCR) is an important new tool for use in the clinical microbiology laboratory. Its advantages over quantitative PCR (qPCR), including absolute quantification without a standard curve, improved precision, improved accuracy in the presence of inhibitors, and more accurate quantitation when amplification efficiency is low, make dPCR the assay of choice for several specimen testing applications. This minireview will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of dPCR compared to qPCR, its applications in clinical microbiology, and considerations for implementation of the method in a clinical laboratory.