Opinion: Everyone needs access to fungal disease diagnostics

While acute fungal infections are less common than bacterial and viral infections, they carry a higher death rate. In fact for many with AIDS, patients in intensive care, or with leukemia, fungal disease is not survivable without both correct diagnosis and therapy. This is why rapid diagnostics for these infections are so important.

Diagnosis of fungal disease can be done using culture or non-culture tests. Fungal culture requires a moderately sophisticated laboratory, and considerable skill and training to identify positives, unlike the non-culture tests which are simpler to do and straightforward to interpret.

Over 50% of fungal diseases are (or should be) diagnosed without culture, including cryptococcal meningitis, disseminated histoplasmosis and Pneumocystis pneumonia in HIV/AIDS, invasive and chronic pulmonary aspergillosis, coccidioidomycosis and coccidioidal meningitis, and many others. Although diagnosis using culture of fungi is important, it is insufficient, often falsely negative, and slow.