Analytical comparison of in vitro spiked human serum and plasma for the PCR - based 1 detection of Aspergillus fumigatus DNA – a study by the European Aspergillus PCR

Analytical comparison of in vitro spiked human serum and plasma for the PCR-based 1 detection of Aspergillus fumigatus DNA – a study by the European Aspergillus PCR 2 Initiative 3 4 Juergen Loeffler*, Carlo Mengoli, Jan Springer, Stephane Bretagne, Manuel Cuenca 5 Estrella, Lena Klingspor, Katrien Lagrou, Willem JG Melchers, C. Oliver Morton, 6 Rosemary A. Barnes, J. Peter Donnelly, and P. Lewis White, on behalf of the European 7 Aspergillus PCR Initiative 8 9 Affiliations: Wuerzburg University, Wuerzburg, Germany, University of Padua, Padua, 10 Italy, Paris Diderot University, Saint Louis Hospital-APHP, Paris, France; Spanish National 11 Centre for Microbiology, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Karolinska University 12 Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden; National Reference Center for Mycosis, University Hospitals 13 Leuven, Leuven, Belgium and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, KU Leuven, 14 Leuven, Belgium; Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 15 University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Cardiff University, UHW, Cardiff; 16 Public Health Wales Microbiology Cardiff, UK. 17 18 *Correspondence 19 Prof. Dr. Jürgen Löffler 20 University Hospital Wuerzburg 21 Medical Hospital II, Building C11 22 97080 Wuerzburg, Germany 23 Telephone +49 931 20136412, Fax: +49 931 20136409 24 Mailto: [email protected] 25 JCM Accepted Manuscript Posted Online 17 June 2015 J. Clin. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/JCM.00906-15 Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.