Journal Top Ten, COLUMNS-Mold, May 2005

ARTICLE: "Antifungal therapy decreases sensitivity of the Aspergillus galactomannan enzyme immunoassay"

SUMMARY: Reported sensitivity of the galactomannan enzyme immunoassay as an early diagnostic test for invasive aspergillosis (IA) has been widely variable, ranging from 29 percent to 100 percent in earlier clinical studies. In this study, performance of the test was calculated in per-patient and per-test analyses in a large cohort of patients at high risk for IA from 2 North American centers. A total of 272 serum samples obtained from 46 patients with IA and 3005 serum samples obtained from …