Submitted by Aspergillus Administrator on 23 February 2010
Diagnosis of an invasive aspergillosis infection can be very difficult, partly because some of the techniques used can take up to 2 weeks to carry out (culture) and others simply don’t work for some forms of infection while they do in others (Reference).
Diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis has to be as quick as possible as in some cases the rate of infection is very rapid. PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) is a technique which allows specific DNA sequences to be detected and analysed very quickly – in a matter of hours. It can detect extremely small amounts of material and can be very specific, detecting one molecule in many billion, so for these reasons it has great potential to detect infecting organisms using only blood samples taken from the patient.
Unsurprisingly it is being developed for use in aspergillosis and though there are many challenges to its success substantial progress has been made. One significant barrier to success has been the lack of standardised protocols
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