Diagnostic approaches of pneumonia for commercial-scale biomedical applications: an overview

ABSTRACT

Pneumonia remains the leading infectious cause of death among children under five years of age, and the elderly. Several biomarkers, which have been identified for its diagnosis lack specificity, as they could not differentiate viral from bacterial pathogens of the disease; these biomarkers also fail to establish a distinction between pneumonia and other associated diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). This review outlined the menace of pneumonia disease from the statistical prevalence, clinical and immunological view, challenges with the methods used in diagnosis, and more useful information about methods of diagnosis of pneumonia with their limitations as well. Additionally, the use of aptamers and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) rather than antibodies to bind and recognize receptors for diagnostics, offers several advantages over other biomarkers shortcomings such as non-specificity.

KEYWORDS:

• Pneumonia
• aptamers
• antimicrobial peptides
• biomarkers
• diagnosis
• bioinformatics

Acknowledgements

Special appreciation to National Research Foundation (NRF) (grant number 112332), South Africa and South African National Zakat Fund (SANZAF). Conceived and designed the concept: AP, OOB; and wrote the paper: AOF, OOB; read and review the paper: MK, AOF, AK.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation (NRF) [grant number 112332], South Africa.