Editing Escherichia coli (section)

=== Diagnosis ===
Diagnosis of infectious diarrhea and identification of antimicrobial resistance is performed using a [[stool culture]] with subsequent [[antibiotic sensitivity testing]]. It requires a minimum of 2 days and maximum of several weeks to culture gastrointestinal pathogens.  The sensitivity (true positive) and specificity (true negative) rates for stool culture vary by pathogen, although a number of [[human pathogen]]s can not be [[microbiological culture|cultured]]. For culture-positive samples, antimicrobial resistance testing takes an additional 12–24 hours to perform.

Current [[point of care]] [[molecular diagnostic]] tests can identify ''E. coli'' and antimicrobial resistance in the identified strains much faster than culture and sensitivity testing. Microarray-based platforms can identify specific pathogenic strains of ''E. coli'' and ''E. coli''-specific AMR genes in two hours or less with high sensitivity and specificity, but the size of the test panel (i.e., total pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes) is limited. Newer [[Metagenomics#Infectious disease diagnosis|metagenomics-based infectious disease diagnostic]] platforms are currently being developed to overcome the various limitations of culture and all currently available molecular diagnostic technologies.