Clinical Utility of Biomarkers in Fungal Infection

摘要

Biomarkers are important means for the diagnosis of invasive mycoses as cultures may not be positive even in the setting of significant infection. Furthermore, invasive procedures which may be necessary to establish definitive evidence of infection are often reluctantly undertaken in severely immunosuppressed patients. For some mycoses, such as Cryptococcus and Histoplasma, the detection of circulating polysaccharide antigen has proven a very useful target for both diagnosis and response to therapy.