TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sattler, Janko
A1  - Noster, Janina
A1  - Brunke, Anne
A1  - Plum, Georg
A1  - Wiegel, Pia
A1  - Kurzai, Oliver
A1  - Meis, Jacques F.
A1  - Hamprecht, Axel
T1  - Comparison of two commercially available qPCR kits for the detection of Candida auris
JF  - Journal of Fungi
N2  - Candida auris is an emerging pathogen with resistance to many commonly used antifungal agents. Infections with C. auris require rapid and reliable detection methods to initiate successful medical treatment and contain hospital outbreaks. Conventional identification methods are prone to errors and can lead to misidentifications. PCR-based assays, in turn, can provide reliable results with low turnaround times. However, only limited data are available on the performance of commercially available assays for C. auris detection. In the present study, the two commercially available PCR assays AurisID (OLM, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) and Fungiplex Candida Auris RUO Real-Time PCR (Bruker, Bremen, Germany) were challenged with 29 C. auris isolates from all five clades and eight other Candida species as controls. AurisID reliably detected C. auris with a limit of detection (LoD) of 1 genome copies/reaction. However, false positive results were obtained with high DNA amounts of the closely related species C. haemulonii, C. duobushaemulonii and C. pseudohaemulonii. The Fungiplex Candida Auris RUO Real-Time PCR kit detected C. auris with an LoD of 9 copies/reaction. No false positive results were obtained with this assay. In addition, C. auris could also be detected in human blood samples spiked with pure fungal cultures by both kits. In summary, both kits could detect C. auris-DNA at low DNA concentrations but differed slightly in their limits of detection and specificity.
KW  - qPCR
KW  - detection limits
KW  - sensitivity
KW  - strain specificity
KW  - commercial kits
KW  - Candida auris
KW  - Fungiplex Candida Auris
KW  - AurisID
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228879
SN  - 2309-608X
VL  - 7
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Springer, Jan
A1  - Walther, Grit
A1  - Rickerts, Volker
A1  - Hamprecht, Axel
A1  - Willinger, Birgit
A1  - Teschner, Daniel
A1  - Einsele, Hermann
A1  - Kurzai, Oliver
A1  - Loeffler, Juergen
T1  - Detection of Fusarium Species in Clinical Specimens by Probe-Based Real-Time PCR
JF  - Journal of Fungi
N2  - The mold Fusarium is a ubiquitous fungus causing plant, animal and human infections. In humans, Fusarium spp. are the major cause of eye infections in patients wearing contact lenses or after local trauma. Systemic infections by Fusarium spp. mainly occur in immunosuppressed patients and can disseminate throughout the human body. Due to high levels of resistance to antifungals a fast identification of the causative agent is an urgent need. By using a probe-based real-time PCR assay specific for the genus Fusarium we analysed several different clinical specimens detecting Fusarium spp. commonly found in clinical samples in Germany. Also, a large collection of lung fluid samples of haematological patients was analysed (n = 243). In these, two samples (0.8%) were reproducibly positive, but only one could be confirmed by sequencing. For this case of probable invasive fungal disease (IFD) culture was positive for Fusarium species. Here we describe a rapid, probe-based real-time PCR assay to specifically detect DNA from a broad range of Fusarium species and its application to clinically relevant specimens.
KW  - probe-based real-time PCR
KW  - Fusarium
KW  - bronchoalveolar lavage fluid
KW  - fungal molecular diagnostics
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-193111
SN  - 2309-608X
VL  - 5
IS  - 4
ER  -