Diagnosis of invasive fungal infections by a real-time panfungal PCR assay in pediatric patients undergoing intensive chemotherapy or allogeneic stem cell transplantion

Invasive fungal infections are life threatening events in severely immunocompromised patients, and there is urgent need for reliable screening methods facilitating rapid and broad detection of pathogenic fungi. We have established a two-reaction real-time PCR assay permitting highly sensitive detection and quantitative monitoring of more than 80 fungal pathogens, covering a large spectrum of moulds, yeasts and Zygomycetes. To assess the clinical potential of the panfungal real-time PCR assay, more than 600 consecutive specimens from 126 pediatric patients carrying a high risk of invasive fungal infections were a…