As strain variation and drug resistance become more pervasive, the prevention and control of infection have been a serious problem in recent years. The detection of pathogen is one of the most important parts of the process of diagnosis. Having a series of advantages, such as rapid response, high sensitivity, ease of use, and low cost, biosensors have received much attention and been studied deeply. Moreover, relying on its characteristics of small size, real time, and multiple analyses, biosensors have developed rapidly and used widely and are expected to be applied for microbiological detection in order to meet higher accuracy required by clinical diagnosis. The main goal of this contribution is not to simply collect and list all papers related to pathogen detection based on biosensors published recently, but to discuss critically the development and application of many kinds of biosensors such as electrochemical (amperometric, impedimetric, potentiometric, and conductometric), optical (fluorescent, fibre optic and surface plasmon resonance), and piezoelectric (quartz crystal microbalances and atomic force microscopy) biosensors in pathogen detection as well as the comparisons with the existing clinical detection methods (traditional culture, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, polymerase chain reaction, and mass spectrometry).
Keywords: Biosensor; Comparison; Medical detection methods; Pathogen.