Overview: Includes supplementary material: The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has become an increasingly important tool in microbial diagnosis in recent years, mainly because of its rapidity, high sensitivity, and specificity. In a number of instances, parti- larly with noncultivatable and slow-growing microorganisms, reliable iden- fication and differentiation became possible only after the introduction of PCR-based methods. Because the number of published procedures is large and steadily rising, there is a need for critical evaluation, comparison of performance, and even- ally also standard
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