Usefulness of optical brighteners in medical mycology

Besides the remarkable progress which has been made in the laboratory diagnosis of mycoses, there is still a need for an affordable diagnostic procedure which would allow the rapid diagnosis of deep seated mycoses which may be life threatening in compromised patients and are often difficult to treat. A step forward to alleviate this situation was the introduction of the optical brighteners into diagnostic mycology, which was initially suggested in 1984 almost simultaneously by three different groups [1-3]. Typical optical brighteners like Calcofluor white / Tinopal (Sigma, USA) or Blankophor (Bayer, Leverkusen, Germany) are diaminostilbene compounds (Figure 1) which by intercalation non-covalently bind to ß-glycosidically linked polysaccharides.