Figure 4. A prospective study.

(A) ΔCt_pathogen for each commensal organism (n = 153). Samples in which real-time PCR failed to detect the organism are shown at the bottom (“Not detected”). The ΔCt_pathogen cutoff demarcated well the samples obtained from the patients in whom the likely causative pathogen was identified by criteria (1) – (4). (B) Interrelationship between the pathogens detected. Samples obtained from the patients in whom the other 3 commensal organisms were identified as a likely causative pathogen or samples in which a non-commensal organism was detected by real-time PCR are colored. Most of the colored circles are located below the cutoff line.