The role of galactomannan test results in the diagnosis of pediatric invasive aspergillosis

• Published in: Infectious diseases (London, England) England), 2022-04, Vol.54 (4), p.269-276
• Main Authors: Özen, Seval, Özdemir, Halil, Evren, Ebru, Taşkın, Esra Çakmak, Arga, Gül, Konca, Hatice Kübra, Çakmaklı, Hasan Fatih, Haskoloğlu, Şule, Okulu, Emel, Dinçaslan, Handan, İnce, Elif, İleri, Talia, Taçyıldız, Nurdan, Doğu, Figen, Us, Ebru, Karahan, Zeynep Ceren, Fitöz, Suat, Kendirli, Tanıl, Kuloğlu, Zarife, Tutar, Ercan, İkincioğulları, Aydan, Ünal, Emel, Ertem, Mehmet, İnce, Erdal, Çiftçi, Ergin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aspergillosis - diagnosis; Child; febrile neutropenia; Female; Galactose - analogs & derivatives; Humans; Invasive aspergillosis; Invasive Fungal Infections - diagnosis; Male; Mannans; odds ratio; piperacillin-tazobactam; Retrospective Studies; sensitivity; Sensitivity and Specificity; specificity
• ISSN: 2374-4235; 2374-4243
• DOI: 10.1080/23744235.2021.2008486

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in immunosuppressed children. Early detection of the infection can improve prognosis in this patient population. To investigate the utility of Aspergillus galactomannan antigen assay (GM-EIA) as a diagnostic tool for IA in at-risk paediatric patients. For the study, 659 GM-EIA results from 59 patients diagnosed with IA and 3368 GM-EIA results from 351 subjects without evidence for IA (controls) were reviewed retrospectively. Three cut-off values (i.e. ≥0.5, ≥1, ≥1.5) were specified to determine GM-EIA positivity. The median age was 6.3 years for boys and 14.5 years for girls. There was a significant difference between the girls and boys in terms of age (p