Objective To assess the quantitative impact of the application of high-throughput sequencing worldwide on clinical virology.Methods The following records from 2000 to 2018 were collected from National Center for Biotechnology Information:The number of complete genome of virus records per year;the number of virus discovery articles per year;the number of virus quasi-species articles per year;the number of viral infection gene signature articles per year.The method of interrupted time series was applied to analyze the trends of those records.Results Since the sequencing centers worldwide began to transit from the Sanger sequencing to the high-throughput sequencing technology in 2008,the annual value of records mentioned above increased by 3.755,2.760,6.195 and 3.885 times respectively.The long-term trends of change of each record are as follows:the number of complete genome of virus records increased by 1639.991 per year (P＜0.001);the number of virus discovery articles increased by 83.091 per year (P＜0.001);the number of virus quasi-species articles increased by 2.509 per year (P＜ 0.001);the number of viral infection gene signature articles increased by 30.836 per year (P＜ 0.001).Conclusions In 2008,the sequencing centers worldwide began to apply high-throughput sequencing technology which led to continuous decrease of the cost for sequencing.It result ed in not only increasingly enriched applications in clinical virology but also a long-term positive impact on the advance of clinical virology.

Objective: To detect pathogens in clinical cerebrospinal fluid samples from 5 suspected encephalitis cases. Methods: Five cerebrospinal samples were treated with both random and virus sequence independent targeted amplification(VSITA) method , followed by next-generation sequencing. Host trascriptome profiling combined with quantitative PCR were conducted to verify the detected pathogen. Results: Cytomegalovirus(CMV) was detected in 3 cases. Quantitative PCR showed weakly positive result (Ct value: 30.23, 32.83, 34.08). The enhancement result of host infection pathway indicated CMV infection (P=0.213). Sequencing reads analysis showed better result in VSITA (P=0.096). Conclusions This is the first application of VSITA for cerebrospinal fluid samples. This enrichment method showed great potential while it needs further improvement. Consistency in gene expression detection between VSITA and random method makes it possible for host transcriptome profiling. Analysis result detected increase of CMV infection pathway in 3 positive cases, which further identified CMV infection in the 3 cases.