A spergillus fumigatus is the most frequent cause of invasive mold infections in immunocompromised patients. The mortality rate from these infections varies substantially and depends on patient characteristics and the extent of disease. Mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients with invasive aspergillosis (IA) can be as high as 90% (1). In hematology patients, a relatively low mortality is observed when the diagnosis is made early and treatment with voriconazole, the current standard of care (2), is initiated promptly (3). In 2002, the landmark study by Herbrecht et al. (4) showed that the treatment of IA with voriconazole resulted in improved survival. However, a series of recent publications described the appearance of azole resistance in A. fumigatus (5-10). This resistance is caused by a mutation in the CYP51A gene of A. fumigatus at position 98 (L98H), together with a 34-bp tandem repeat (TR) in the promoter region (TR34). CYP51A encodes cytochrome p450 sterol 14␣-demethylase, the target of azoles. The majority of these mutated strains were cultured from patients who were never exposed to azoles. It is assumed that resistance development is caused by environmental azole exposure (11). More recently, van der Linden et al. (12) described a second mutation, a 46-bp TR combined with the point mutations Y121F and T289A (12). In this study, 47 of 921 patients (5.1%) were diagnosed with TR34-L98H and 13 (1.4%) with the TR46-Y121F-T289A mutations. Other mutations have also been described (13-16). Infections with azole-resistant strains are associated with a very high mortality rate (17).Currently, the absence of a non-culture-based, fast, and readily available azole susceptibility testing method compromises the identification of azole resistance. This is a major limitation, as the mortality of IA increases substantially when the initiation of adequate therapy is delayed (18). Furthermore, most Aspergillus infections are diagnosed indirectly using galactomannan (or ␤-1,3-D-glucan) testing, because cultures remain negative in most patients. Therefore, even if culture-based azole resistance testing became broadly available, this would be helpful in only a subset of patients.This study describes the laboratory and first clinical validation of the AsperGenius, a new Aspergillus real-time PCR assay that detects Aspergillus species directly from bronchoalveolar lavage

The AsperGenius assay had a good diagnostic performance on BAL and differentiated WT from Aspergillus fumigatus with RAMs, including in culture-negative BAL samples. Most importantly, detection of RAMs was associated with azole treatment failure.

e Testing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for the presence of galactomannan (GM) antigen may help in diagnosing cerebral aspergillosis (CA). However, the use of the CSF GM test as a diagnostic test has been little studied. We evaluated its diagnostic performance by comparing the CSF GM optical density indexes (ODI) at different cutoffs in patients with probable and proven CA to those in patients without CA. Patients from 2 tertiary referral hospitals with suspected CA between 2004 and 2014 and in whom CSF GM ODI had been determined were selected. European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Invasive Infectious Diseases Study Mycoses Group (EORTC/MSG) definitions of invasive aspergillosis and CA were used, but with the exclusion of the test to be validated (i.e., the CSF GM test) as a microbiological EORTC/MSG criterion. The study population consisted of 44 patients (4 with proven CA, 13 with probable CA, and 27 with no CA). Of the 17 patients with CA, 15 had a CSF GM ODI of >2.0. Of 27 patients without CA, 26 had a CSF GM ODI of <0.5 and 1 had a CSF GM ODI of 8.2. When a GM CSF ODI cutoff of 1.0 was used, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values were 88.2%, 96.3%, 93.8%, and 92.9%, respectively. The same results were found when a CSF GM ODI cutoff of 0.5 or 2.0 was used. Testing GM in CSF has a high diagnostic performance for diagnosing CA and may be useful to diagnose or virtually rule out the infection without the need for a cerebral biopsy. C erebral aspergillosis (CA) is a rare and often fatal invasive fungal disease (IFD) (1, 2). The diagnosis is challenging, as radiological findings are nonspecific and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cultures are positive only in less than one-third of cases (3, 4). Moreover, obtaining brain tissue for histopathological examination, the diagnostic gold standard, is frequently not feasible. Galactomannan (GM) antigen detection in CSF is one of the microbiological criteria in the revised European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Invasive Infectious Diseases Study Mycoses Group (EORTC/MSG) criteria (5). However, its diagnostic performance has been studied very little. To date, only 3 studies including a total of 25 patients have described the value of CSF GM, only 2 of which were carried out with patients with suspected CA (3, 6, 7). In these 2 studies, CSF GM optical density indexes (ODI) were higher in patients with CA than in those without CA, and sensitivity and specificity were 80% and 100% (6, 7). Based on these limited data, the GM antigen test in CSF seems promising, even though no positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV) were determined and no formal cutoff was established. This study evaluated the diagnostic performance of the Platelia GM antigen test (Bio-Rad, Marnes-la-Coquette) in CSF of patients with suspected CA.(This information was presented at the 7th Trends in Medical Mycology, Lisbon, Portugal, 9 to 12 October 2015 [8].) MATERIALS AND METHODSThis retrospective study was performed at the Erasm...

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The AsperGenius assay detects several Aspergillus species and the A. fumigatus Cyp51A mutations TR/L98H/T289A/Y121F that are associated with azole resistance. We evaluated its contribution in identifying A. lentulus and A. felis, 2 rare but intrinsically azole-resistant sibling species within the Aspergillus section Fumigati. Identification of these species with conventional culture techniques is difficult and time-consuming. The assay was tested on (i) 2 A. lentulus and A. felis strains obtained from biopsy proven invasive aspergillosis and (ii) control A. fumigatus (n=3), A. lentulus (n=6) and A. felis species complex (n=12) strains. The AsperGenius resistance PCR did not detect the TR target in A. lentulus and A. felis in contrast to A. fumigatus. Melting peaks for L98H and Y121F markers differed and those of the Y121F marker were particularly suitable to discriminate the 3 species. In conclusion, the assay can be used to rapidly discriminate A. fumigatus, A. lentulus and A. felis.

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