Performance of 2 commercial real-time polymerase chain reaction assays for the detection of Aspergillus and Pneumocystis DNA in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples from critical care patients

This article investigates the performance of 2 commercial real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays, MycAssay™ Aspergillus (MycAspAssay) and MycAssay™ Pneumocystis (MycPCPAssay), on the ABI 7300 platform for the detection of Aspergillus (Asp) or Pneumocystis jirovecii (Pj) DNA in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples from 20 patients. Operationally, patients enrolled were clustered into 3 groups: invasive aspergillosis group (IA, 7 patients), Pj pneumonia group (PCP, 8 patients), and negative control group (5 patients). All the IA patients were MycAspAssay positive, whereas 12 non-IA patients returned negative PCR results. Furthermore, 7 of 8 PCP patients were MycPCPAssay positive, while 9 non-PCP patients were PCR negative. In conclusion, these data provide an early indication of the effectiveness of both the MycAspAssay and MycPCPAssay on the ABI 7300 platform for the detection of either Asp or Pj DNA in BAL from patients with deep fungal infections.