Laboratory approaches to infectious diarrhea

The selection of laboratory tests to assist in the diagnosis of infectious diarrhea is complicated by the large number of described infectious agents and the variety of diagnostic methodologies, often organism-specific and ex pensive, that are available to the practitioner. Consensus guidelines and a lgorithms offer some assistance in navigating this maze in a cost-effective manner. Laboratory methods available differ significantly in their perform ance characteristics and vary from traditional culture-based methods,, stai ns, and electron microscopy to sensitive and specific immunoassays and mole cular methods.