Rapid Diagnosis of Pneumocystis jirovecii Pneumonia and Respiratory Tract Colonization by Next-Generation Sequencing

To describe the epidemiology of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia and colonization diagnosed by next-generation sequencing (NGS) and explore the usefulness of the number of P. jirovecii sequence reads for the diagnosis of P. jirovecii pneumonia. We examined the NGS results for P. jirovecii in respiratory samples collected from patients and analysed their clinical, radiological and microbiological characteristics. Among 285 respiratory samples collected over a 12-month period (January to December 2022), P. jirovecii sequences were detected in 56 samples from 53 patients. Fifty (94.3