Real-time polymerase chain reaction detection of Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii in human samples

We report a TaqMan® real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol for diagnosing cryptococcosis. Specificity was tested with 33 fungal strains. The 7 clinical samples found positive by culture also tested positive by real-time PCR. No false negatives were found among the 94 clinical samples that were negative by culture for Cryptococcus spp. The sensitivity threshold was about 10 plasmid copies per assay.