Circulating galactomannan screening for early diagnosis and treatment of invasive aspergillosis

OBJECTIVE: To explore the value of circulating galactomannan (GM) screening for early diagnosis and treatment monitoring of invasive aspergillosis (IA). METHODS: Serum samples from 141 IA patients for the detection of GM by Platelia Aspergillus (Bia-Rad) were collected before and after systematic anti-fungal therapy. RESULTS: (1) An increase in the clinical diagnosis rate of IA was obtained on the result of GM detection. The GM positivity appeared (10+/-4.1) (8-15) d before positive sputum culture, while (12.6+/-5.7) (6-22) d before the CT positive image. (2) Among the 62 patients with consecutive serum samples, 50 were success in treatment and 12 died. A progressive decrease of GM level was found in the former group, while the rising antigen titres were found in the latter. CONCLUSION: Compared with other diagnostic test, GM test has an obvious advantage of higher positivity and earlier result. The anti-fungal effectiveness can be estimated by dynamic detection of serum GM.