The diagnostic value of RNA-mNGS and DNA-mNGS in differentiating bacterial infection from colonization in the lower respiratory tract

Bacterial relative abundance and sequencing reads can serve as indicators to distinguish between infection and colonization, and the relative abundance based on RNA-mNGS exhibits the best differential diagnostic performance; when DNA-mNGS results stand alone, the relative abundance of the detected bacteria and the ratio of relative abundance between the first-ranked and the second-ranked detected bacteria can be utilized for a comprehensive assessment of infection versus colonization.