Clinical performance of a commercial real-time PCR assay for Aspergillus DNA detection in serum samples from high-risk patients: comparison with a galactomannan enzyme immunoassay

We investigated the clinical performance of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based commercial platform, the Myconostica MycAssayTM Aspergillus (MAP), for fungal DNA detection in the serum of patients at risk of invasive aspergillosis (IA). Sixty-four hospitalized patients were prospectively enrolled and a total of 71 different episodes were investigated (30 episodes were clinically/microbiologically classified as IA and 41 as control episodes). When MAP was compared to the galactomannan (GM) assay, no significant differences were found in terms of sensitivity (46.7 % vs. 50.0 %), specificity (97.6 % vs. 95.1 %), positive predictive value (PPV) (93.3 % vs. 88.2 %), and negative predictive value (NPV) (71.4 % vs. 72.2 %). The corresponding areas under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were also superimposable. Overall, because of the good agreement between the two assays and considering the high specificity and PPV of the MAP, we suggest the use of this PCR-based platform as a second-level examination for the evaluation of clinically undefined cases where culture or GM have provided positive results.