Shotgun metagenomics to investigate unknown viral etiologies of pediatric meningoencephalitis.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Meningoencephalitis in children poses a diagnostic challenge, as etiology remains unknown for most of patients. Viral metagenomics by shotgun sequencing represents a powerful tool for investigating unknown viral infections related to these cases.

Patients and methods

In a two-year, reference-centre, retrospective study, we investigated the usefulness of viral metagenomics of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for the diagnosis of viral infectious meningoencephalitis in forty seven pediatric patients, forty of them previously tested negative with a routine neurologic panel of viral targets that included herpesvirus 1-3 and enterovirus. We enhanced the detection by targeting viral sequences by hybrid capture. Raw sequence data was analysed using three bioinformatics pipeli

SUBMITTER: Castellot A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10734945 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature