Recent Progress in the Diagnosis of Pathogenic Candida Species in Blood Culture

Candidemia has become an emerging invasive fungal disease. Prompt treatment with appropriate antifungal agent is crucial to reduce the mortality of candidemia. The conventional blood culture method, which is considered the gold standard for candidemia diagnosis, has a low sensitivity and is time-consuming to perform. Recently, several novel advanced diagnostic methods that have a higher sensitivity and a shorter turnaround time than the conventional blood culture method have been developed for the early detection of Candida in blood samples or in blood culture broth. Most of these newer methods were developed using various molecular techniques, such as matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry, peptide nucleic acid fluorescence in situ hybridization, and a number of DNA-based techniques including in-house and commercial polymerase chain reactions. In this article, we review and summarize the novel molecular methods that have been recently used for the detection and identification of Candida organisms in blood specimens.