Value of circulating galactomannan screening for early diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in hematological patients

Objective To detect the value of serum galactomannan (GM) for diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis (IA) in hematological patients. Methods We prospectively evaluated the diagnostic value of twice-weekly screening for circulating Aspergillus fumigatus with sanditch enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results On the basis of the analysis of 472 serum samples from 113 episodes of 92 patients, the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of the sandwich ELISA for proven and probable IA cases were 83.3 %, 91.1 %, 78.9 % and 93.1 %, respectively, when samples with 2 consecutive positive results≥0.7 were used. Furthermore, GM antigenemia was detected before the onset of radiologic signs with a median of 7 days (range, 1-14 days), before isolation of Aspergillus with a median of 4 days (range, 1-7 days),and before anti-fungal therapy with a median of 6 days (range, 1-15 days). Conclusion The sandwich ELISA for GM detection is a reliable method for early diagnosis of IA in patients with haematological diseases. Key words: Enzyme immunoassay; Galactomannan; Invasive aspergillosis