• Cornelius J Clancy and Minh Hong Nguyen.
• VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Pittsburgh, Scaife 867, 3550 Terrace St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
• Expert Rev Anti Infect Ther. 2014 Jul 1; 12 (7): 731-4.

AbstractThe insensitivity of blood cultures for diagnosing invasive candidiasis fuels prophylactic and preemptive antifungal treatment. Assays like serum β-D-glucan or mannan/anti-mannan detection can identify blood culture-negative invasive candidiasis, but their roles in guiding antifungal therapy are undefined. We propose that non-culture tests can be incorporated into rational management strategies, based on clinical setting. As an example, β-D-glucan sensitivity/specificity for blood culture-negative, deep-seated candidiasis is approximately 60/75%. In intensive care units with <1 or 3% invasive candidiasis rates, positive/negative predictive values are <2/>99% and 6/98%, respectively. With pre-test likelihoods of 10 and 33%, positive/negative predictive values are 20/94% and 54/79%, respectively. Based on these data, negative and positive β-D-glucan results likely will be most useful for discontinuing prophylaxis among low-risk to moderate-risk patients (pre-test likelihoods ∼3-10%), and triggering preemptive therapy among moderate-risk to high-risk patients (pre-test likelihoods ∼10-25%), respectively. In extremely high-risk patients, universal prophylaxis is likely to be the best strategy.

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