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Clinical Microbiology |
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Clinical Microbiology |
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Richard A. Henson School of Science and Technology
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Clinical Microbiology is the study of any microbes which can cause infection in humans. In particular, this subject is approached by analysis of a particular body site, fluid or tissue in order to discover what is causing an infectious disease. This can involve the classic way of culturing the material on an artificial medium in the laboratory and solving the "mystery" of which bacteria, fungus, virus, or parasite may be the culprit. Following culture, the "suspect" organism is further tested by various manual or automated methods to determine exactly what species it is and sometimes what antibiotic can be used to treat it. For example, when a case or an outbreak of E. coli illness occurs, a medical technologist may culture the suspected food and perform specific tests in order to determine if a strain of the bacteria is responsible. Other, newly developed methods utilized in clinical microbiology involve molecular or genetic testing, for example, the so-called genetic fingerprinting to study the epidemiology of a disease outbreak. |
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