Science AI Journal
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Research topic

Open research questions in Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing

45 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 269 Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Bacterial co-infections can result in severe illness and death. The study had to account for the complex survey design. The study had to collect information on bacterial blood cultures within a limited time frame.

    Prevalence and Outcomes of Bacterial Co-detections by Blood Culture Among Children and Adults Hospitalized With Laboratory-confirmed Influenza, Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network, 2022–2024 · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to understand the epidemiology and outcomes of bacterial co-detections in patients with influenza. The study aims to address this gap by describing the epidemiology and outcomes of blood culture co-detections among persons hospitalized with influenza.

    Prevalence and Outcomes of Bacterial Co-detections by Blood Culture Among Children and Adults Hospitalized With Laboratory-confirmed Influenza, Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network, 2022–2024 · 2026 · DOI

  • The presence of commensal species in stool samples can make it difficult to isolate enteric pathogens. The lack of a perfect gold standard for estimating diagnostic sensitivity and specificity. The resource intensity of stool culture protocols.

    Optimization of stool culture protocol in a tertiary hospital in Bangkok, Thailand: a prospective cohort study · 2026 · DOI

  • The complexity of bacterial infections in hospitalized patients. The need for accurate and timely antimicrobial susceptibility testing. The challenge of developing effective antimicrobial stewardship programs.

    Bacterial pathogen spectrum and antimicrobial resistance in positive pus cultures from hospitalized patients at a maternal and child healthcare specialty hospital in Shenzhen, China, 2021–2025 · 2026 · DOI

  • Inability to access or interrogate the computer system. Inability to change computer settings. Lack of data on compliance with the pre-analytical delay standard.

    Pre-analytical delay of blood cultures: An observational study with an appraisal of the effects of laboratory centralisation. · 2026 · DOI

  • Classification of Gram-stained bacterial microscopy images is a challenging task. Culture medium type affects classification difficulty. Limited dataset size.

    Classification of Gram-Stained Microscopy Images of Bacteria Cultured on Multiple Media Using Frozen and Fine-Tuned ResNet-50 Transfer Learning: A Comparative Study · 2026 · DOI

  • Future studies can build on the study's findings by exploring the mechanisms underlying the associations between wound microbiota and length of stay. Future studies can also investigate the use of 16S rRNA sequencing and conventional culture in other types of wounds.

    16S rRNA sequencing and conventional culture provide complementary information in hospitalized patients with chronic lower-limb wounds · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies a gap in the current understanding of chronic wound microbiology. The study aims to address this gap by comparing the results of 16S rRNA sequencing and conventional culture.

    16S rRNA sequencing and conventional culture provide complementary information in hospitalized patients with chronic lower-limb wounds · 2026 · DOI

  • WHONET, free software distributed since 1989 for the management and analysis of microbiological laboratory data, has been taken up in more than one hundred countries, but its documented application to food isolates remains sparse relative to human clinical use.

    Beyond the Antibiogram: The Significance and Advantages of WHONET-Driven AST Analysis in the Modern Food Microbiology Laboratory · 2026 · DOI

  • The predominance of host nucleic acid in most samples. The high cost of mNGS due to the high sequencing depth required. The need for enrichment techniques that can improve the sensitivity, specificity, and overall efficiency of mNGS.

    Enrichment techniques for clinical metagenomics · 2026 · DOI

  • Further refinement and implementation of enrichment techniques are needed. The development of new enrichment methods that can improve the sensitivity, specificity, and overall efficiency of mNGS is necessary.

    Enrichment techniques for clinical metagenomics · 2026 · DOI

  • This study reports on several of the most widely used commercial AST systems across laboratory settings, including commercial reference laboratories, and concludes that Sensititre may be a viable commercial option when susceptibility testing is warranted.

    Is it okay to use a commercially available AST for <i>Burkholderia cepacia</i> complex? · 2026 · DOI

  • Conventional blood culture has limitations, including delayed pathogen identification and prolonged empirical antibiotic therapy. There is a need for rapid diagnostic platforms that can improve microbiological diagnosis and patient outcomes.

    Diagnostic Performance of FilmArray and MALDI-TOF for the Detection of Klebsiella pneumoniae for Sepsis and Bloodstream Infections: A Meta-Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • The necessity of specific selective media for isolating enteric pathogens is frequently debated. There is a lack of studies on the prevalence of enteric pathogens in Thai tertiary hospitals.

    Optimization of stool culture protocol in a tertiary hospital in Bangkok, Thailand: a prospective cohort study · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies a gap in diagnostic stewardship in ICUs. The study notes that high BC utilization in adult ICUs is associated with excessive contamination rates.

    Blood Culture Utilization, Contamination Rates, Antibiotic Use, and Patient Outcomes in Intensive Care Units at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Western India: A Prospective Observational Study · 2026 · DOI

  • A major strength of this study lies in its 12-month prospective observational design and the integration of microbiological profiles, antimicrobial utilization metrics, and patient outcomes within a unified epidemiological framework. Furthermore, the inclusion of diverse intensive care populations, spanning adult (MICU), neonatal (NICU), and pediatric (PICU) settings, provides a highly comprehensive, real-world picture of baseline BC practices and the localized MDR burden. Our study has several important limitations that must be acknowledged. First, in addition to the single- center observational design and lack of longitudinal time-series tracking, no formal diagnostic stewardship intervention was implemented during the study period; therefore, the data represent baseline epidemiology rather than interventional outcomes. Second, due to data collection constraints, we were unable to incorporate standardized severity-of-illness scores (such as APACHE II or SOFA) or assess the precise timing and appropriateness of the initial empirical antibiotic therapies administered. Finally, our primary outcome and antibiotic consumption analyses were explicitly restricted to the subset of culture-positive patients (n = 142). While this allowed for a focused evaluation of definitive targeted therapy, it inherently limits the ability to draw broad inferences regarding the overall impact of pre-analytical stewardship on the wider culture-negative ICU population.

    Blood Culture Utilization, Contamination Rates, Antibiotic Use, and Patient Outcomes in Intensive Care Units at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Western India: A Prospective Observational Study · 2026 · DOI

  • Traditional approaches frequently fail to correctly identify infections - Molecular biology approaches are becoming increasingly important in clinical microbiology

    Advancements and challenges in molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases · 2026 · DOI

  • • Development of cost-effective, portable devices for remote • High initial investment for advanced molecular and underserved areas diagnostic platforms • Some molecular tests becoming more affordable due to mass • Lack of accessibility in low- and middle-income production countries Faster approval processes (e.g., emergency use authorizations during pandemics like COVID-19) Regulatory hurdles for new diagnostic technologies, particularly in different countries Expansion of molecular diagnostics into personalized medicine for infectious diseases (e.g., tailoring treatment based on genetic resistance) Need for continuous validation and standardization across different clinical…

    Advancements and challenges in molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need for studies on the distribution of bacterial pathogens in hospitalized patients. There is a lack of data on antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of bacterial isolates from pus cultures.

    Bacterial pathogen spectrum and antimicrobial resistance in positive pus cultures from hospitalized patients at a maternal and child healthcare specialty hospital in Shenzhen, China, 2021–2025 · 2026 · DOI

  • Further validation and development of MALDI-TOF MS-based detection of resistance. Investigation of the potential for detecting other resistance mechanisms.

    MALDI-TOF MS-Based Detection of Antimicrobial Resistance: Biomarkers, Assays and Clinical Applications – A Critical Review · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need for a diagnostic tool that can detect a broad range of pathogens in patients with severe pneumonia complicated by bloodstream infections. Traditional microbial examination has limitations in detecting pathogens.

    Application Value of Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing Using Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid and Blood Samples in Patients with Severe Pneumonia Complicated with Bloodstream Infection · 2026 · DOI

  • , MALDI-TOF, allows obtaining the diagnosis faster, these tools may fail to achieve the level of accuracy provided by traditional techniques, especially in case of rare species of bacteria or lack of data in the spectrum database.

    DNase and Conventional Biochemical Tests in the Era of Modern Bacteriological Diagnostics: A Critical Review · 2026 · DOI

  • Further evaluation of the BCID2 method in clinical practice. Comparison of the BCID2 method with other diagnostic tests. Investigation of the cost-effectiveness of the BCID2 method.

    Clinical performance of the BioFire Blood Culture Identification 2 panel for microorganism species identification and resistance gene detection in blood culture-positive specimens · 2026 · DOI

  • The need for rapid and reliable diagnosis of bloodstream infections. The limitations of the conventional method for species identification. The potential for the BCID2 method to improve patient outcomes.

    Clinical performance of the BioFire Blood Culture Identification 2 panel for microorganism species identification and resistance gene detection in blood culture-positive specimens · 2026 · DOI

  • Evaluation of the approach in a clinical setting. Comparison of the approach with other methods for pathogen identification and resistance detection.

    Performance of pathogen identification and resistance gene expression tests using ASTar(R) remnant bacterial suspension in Gram-negative contrived positive blood cultures · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing

Most recent work

Find a gap in your own Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing sub-topic

This page shows what the Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing literature already flags as unresolved. To narrow it to your specific question, run the guided finder — it searches the gap library on demand and checks candidates against 250M+ OpenAlex works.

Open the Research Gap Finder →

Related topics in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Gut microbiota and health
619 open questions
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
358 open questions
Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria
225 open questions
Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
212 open questions
Breast Cancer Treatment Studies
201 open questions
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
196 open questions
Mitochondrial Function and Pathology
188 open questions
Genomics and Rare Diseases
172 open questions
45 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 269 Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

Tools for your next paper

Gaps & Literature SearchFind open questions in any field — 120,000+ open gaps mined from our own library.Pre-CheckIs your paper ready? A Tier 1–5 acceptance probability in seconds.Journal FinderA ranked shortlist of target journals from a 17,500-venue index.Duplicate Publication CheckerCheck prior-publication & salami-slicing risk across 8 sources.Citation GeneratorFreeA DOI or title → APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS. No signup.Graphical Abstract MakerFreeTurn your findings into a colorblind-safe graphical abstract.

Compare the category — Honest roundups of the AI research tools, ours listed alongside the alternatives.

Command palette

Jump anywhere, run any action.