Diagnosis of Dermatophytosis

Dermatophytoses are infections of the skin, hair or nails caused by dermatophytes. Dermatophytes can induce typical diagnostic clinical lesions (tinea), but can also mimic other dermatoses. Therefore, physicians need to be familiar with the whole spectrum of tinea and must constantly be mindful of possible dermatophytosis. An examination with Wood’s light can be helpful. In superficial lesions, the demonstration of dermatophytes may be achieved by dermatoscopy or laser scanning. An essential step of the following diagnostic procedure is the skilful collection of samples for the proof of fungi. Microscopy of KOH mounts or equivalent preparations produced from infected material and histology are approved methods. The necessary identification of dermatophytes on species level can finally be accomplished by conventional methods based on cultures or by new techniques based on molecular differentiation or MALDI-TOF analysis. These modern methods are clearly on the increase and can considerably improve and accelerate dermatophyte identification.