Simultaneous Detection of Key Bacterial Pathogens Related to Pneumonia and Meningitis Using Multiplex PCR Coupled With Mass Spectrometry

Zhang, Chi; Xiu, Leshan; Xiao, Yan; Xie, Zhengde; Ren, Lili; Peng, Junping

MassARRAY System (Agena Bioscience, Inc., San Diego, CA, USA), a detection platform combining matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) with endpoint PCR, has been successfully applied in the field of microbial detection (Syrmis et al., 2011; Li et al., 2013; Peng et al., 2013a Peng et al., ,b, 2014 Peng et al., , 2016 Zhang et al., 2015) . Taking advantage of the system's multiplex capability and high sample throughput, we developed and validated a bacterial pathogen-MS panel (BP-MS) to simultaneously screen 11 key bacterial pathogens associated with pneumonia and meningitis, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Neisseria meningitidis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Moraxella catarrhalis, L. pneumophila, M. pneumoniae, and Bordetella pertussis. To evaluate the effectiveness of the BP-MS method, we tested 204 clinical respiratory tract samples. Realtime PCR and nested PCR were used to confirm the results.