-
J. Antimicrob. Chemother. · Nov 2014
Clinical validation of a multiplex real-time PCR assay for detection of invasive candidiasis in intensive care unit patients.
- J Fortún, Y Meije, M J Buitrago, S Gago, L Bernal-Martinez, J Pemán, M Pérez, E Gómez-G Pedrosa, N Madrid, V Pintado, P Martín-Dávila, J Cobo, G Fresco, S Moreno, and M Cuenca-Estrella.
- Servicio de Enfermedades Infecciosas, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigaciones Sanitarias, Madrid, Spain fortunabete@gmail.com.
- J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 2014 Nov 1; 69 (11): 3134-41.
BackgroundNew techniques, such as those based on multiplex quantitative real-time PCR (MRT-PCR), can improve the detection of invasive candidiasis (IC).MethodsWe prospectively studied 63 intensive care unit patients with suspected IC and 40 healthy controls. Blood cultures and MRT-PCR were performed at day 0 and +2, +7, +14 and +21 days in all patients. In addition, β-d-glucan (BDG) and Candida albicans germ tube antibody (CAGTA) were quantified.ResultsIC was confirmed in 27 patients. Colonization was significantly higher in patients with IC (96% versus 64%, P = 0.002). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of MRT-PCR for the diagnosis of IC were 96.3%, 97.3%, 92.8% and 98.7%, respectively. The positive predictive value and specificity were significantly higher for MRT-PCR than for BDG and CATGA. MRT-PCR performed very well, especially in deep-seated IC (sensitivity 90.9% versus 45.4% for blood culture; P = 0.06). As regards the most appropriate clinical sample for DNA amplification, in this study whole blood and serum presented similar results.ConclusionsMRT-PCR appears to be a useful test for confirming a diagnosis of IC in critically ill patients, especially in those with deep-seated disease. Its high sensitivity and positive predictive value make it a much more efficient tool for the management of IC than other diagnostic procedures and clinical scores.© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:

- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.