Orbital aspergillosis is a very rare, debilitating disease which can present solely with painful optic neuropathy and mimic giant cell arteritis in an elderly person. We report case of orbital 65-year-old Malay man who presented unilateral gradual blurring vision ipsilateral headache. Our initial working diagnosis was arteritis. Unfortunately, patient’s condition worsened intravenous corticoste...

BACKGROUND The decision to use universal primary antimould prophylaxis to prevent invasive aspergillosis in patients with acute leukemia depends on the incidence of infection at individual centres. We determined our institution's incidence of invasive aspergillosis among patients who received remission-induction chemotherapy for acute leukemia to evaluate the potential benefits of primary antim...

BACKGROUND Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis is a serious complication of cystic fibrosis and may be difficult to diagnose. The aim of this study was to define the usefulness of measuring total IgE compared with other major criteria in the diagnosis of allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis in children with cystic fibrosis. METHODS A retrospective analysis was carried out of the case r...

We evaluated the usefulness of a serum Aspergillus PCR assay for the diagnosis and prognosis of invasive aspergillosis in a study involving 941 patients for a total of 5146 serum samples. Fifty-one patients had proven/probable aspergillosis. We compared galactomannan (GM), PCR and mycologic analysis of pulmonary samples in both neutropenic and nonneutropenic patients. PCR performed in serum yie...

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) is a severe infection with a 70% mortality rate. Aspergillus fumigatus is responsible for over 90% of those infections. The diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis is based on clinical sample culture and detection of fungal hyphae in histopathological examination. Additional tests may include the detection of the galactomannan antigen and of fungal genetic material in se...

Invasive aspergillosis is a leading cause of infectious death in immunosuppressed patients. Here, we adapted a phage display library-based selection to screen and identify binding peptides to the surface of Aspergillus fumigatus conidia and hyphae. We identified a peptide (sequence CGGRLGPFC) that reliably binds to the surface of Aspergillus fumigatus hyphae. Binding was not Aspergillus strain ...

Fanconi anemia is associated with an increased risk of malignancy. Patients are sensitive to the toxic effects of chemotherapy. We report the case of a patient with Fanconi anemia who developed T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He experienced chemotherapy-related complications including prolonged neutropenia, grade IV vincristine neuropathy, and disseminated aspergillosis. He was successfull...

Central nervous system aspergillosis has increased dramatically in recent years. Most of the cases are immunocompromised patients infected from a primary site, usually the lungs or paranasal sinuses, and the organism may spread to the central nervous system. Different neuroimaging patterns that have been reported vary depending on the immunological status of the patients and on the age of the l...

Wegener's granulomatosis usually presents with clinical features of systemic vasculitis affecting lung, upper respiratory tract, kidney and even a nervous system. Yet, invasive pulmonary aspergillosis is characterised by invasion of blood vessels in the lungs, but the infection often spreads to kidneys, skin and central nervous system. We report a case of a 46-year-old male patient with no prio...