Automation Techniques in Immunological Disorders

Immunological disorders are consequences of malfunctioned immune system. These involve the altered functioning of T- and B- cell lymphocytes either in a particular tissue or multiple organs. Once, considered as rare disorders, but now days, they have become common because of the adverse changes in the genetic, environmental and epigenetic factors. The phenotype of these diseases is generally similar or overlaps with each other which make them difficult to diagnose by clinical methods. Moreover, the manual diagnostic strategies used for the analysis of these diseases are slow, time consuming and capable of detecting small number of samples. This necessitates the usage of automated diagnostic methods for the betterment of prognosis, treatment and management of these disorders. With the rapidly evolving technology, substantial automation has been reported in diagnostic techniques like Indirect Immunofluorscence, Chemiluminiscent assays, Flow cytometry gating, Genome Sequencing. The current chapter is emphasized to summarize the currently available automated techniques being employed in large work load laboratories for the assessment of disease diagnosis, prognosis, severity and activity. The strength and applicability of these methods are also being discussed. These methods, being reproducible, provide more specific and sensitive results with reduced turnaround time. The dubious new cellular population can also be discovered via these advanced techniques. Because of enormous repercussions, automated techniques have gained popularity in clinical laboratories working on immunological disorders.