Nonculture diagnostic methods for invasive fungal infections

Nonculture methods are useful when diagnosing several systemic or invasive mycoses. Commercially available methods include immunoassays to detect cell wall or capsular polysaccharides; zymogen-based colorimetric assays to detect (13)-beta-D-glucan, another cell wall polysaccharide; and molecular methods to detect fungal DNA. Molecular diagnostic methods have received much attention in the last decade but their accuracy has not been established, in part because of a lack of standardized, commercially available reagents or test kits. Serologic tests for antibodies are useful for diagnosis of histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis.