Nucleic acid amplification tests for the detection and analysis of respiratory viruses: the future for diagnostics?

Nucleic acid amplification tests have the potential to revolutionize our diagnosis of respiratory virus infections and enable us to identify and monitor the impact of newly identified viruses on public health. However, the wide range of potential pathogens that can cause similar respiratory symptoms and disease makes application of diagnostic assays based on detection of DNA and RNA both complex and expensive. There is a need to evaluate new technologies and automation beyond conventional or real-time amplification and detection methods to address broad-spectrum diagnosis and for pandemic preparedness. The ability to undertake large-scale screening and sequencing of unknown genomic targets provides the potential to combine technologies to evaluate known causes of respiratory tract infection at the same time as identifying emerging and re-emerging viruses.