• María Dolores Moragues, Natalia Ortiz, José Ramón Iruretagoyena, Juan Carlos García-Ruiz, Elena Amutio, Almudena Rojas, Joaquín Mendoza, Guillermo Quindós, and José Pontón-San Emeterio.
• Departamento de Enfermería I, Facultad de Medicina y Odontología, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Vizcaya, España.
• Enferm. Infecc. Microbiol. Clin. 2004 Feb 1; 22 (2): 83-8.

IntroductionTwo tests for the detection of antibodies to Candida albicans germ tubes in patients with invasive candidiasis were compared: a new commercially available test (Candida albicans IFA IgG) and the indirect immunofluorescence test generally used for this purpose.MethodsWith the use of two indirect immunofluorescence tests, retrospective study was done on 172 sera from 51 patients classified into two groups: Group I included 123 serum samples from 32 patients with invasive candidiasis, and Group II, the control, included 49 serum samples from 19 patients with no evidence of Candida infection.ResultsIn Group I, 84% of patients presented anti-germ tube antibody titers >or= 1:160 by the Candida albicans IFA IgG test and 78.1% of patients were positive by the generally used test. There was a high correlation between the two tests (R2 =0.9512 by patients; R2 = 0.8986 by sera). When a titer value of >or= 1:160 was used as cutoff, the Candida albicans IFA IgG test showed a sensitivity of 84.4% and a specificity of 94.7%, whereas the traditional test showed a sensitivity of 78.1% and a specificity of 100%.ConclusionsThe commercially available Candida albicans IFA IgG test is similar to the test generally used for the detection of antibodies to C. albicans germ tubes and provides faster and easier diagnosis of invasive candidiasis in the clinical microbiology laboratory.

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