Antifungal Susceptibility Testing and Identification

Abstract

The requirement for antifungal susceptibility testing is increasing given the availability of new drugs, increasing populations of individuals at risk for fungal infection, and emerging multiresistant fungi. Rapid and accurate fungal identification remains at the forefront of laboratory efforts to guide empiric therapy. Antifungal susceptibility testing methods have greatly improved, but are subject to variation in results between methods. Careful standardization, validation, and extensive training of users is essential to ensure susceptibility results are clinically useful and interpreted appropriately. Interpretive criteria for many drugs and species are still lacking, but this will continue to evolve.

Keywords: Antifungal susceptibility testing; CLSI; Clinical breakpoints (CBP); EUCAST; Epidemiologic cutoff values (ECV); Fungal barcoding; MALDI-ToF; Sensititre YeastOne.