by Nyuykonge B, Siddig E, Mhmoud NA, Bakhiet S, Zijlstra E, Verbon A, Fahal AH, van de Sande WWJ. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology 2023, 37(4): 639-836. doi: doi.org/10.1111/jdv.18642
Summary: β-D-glucan is a broad-based marker that can be used to detect infection in patients with eumycetoma. The authors compared the performance of the recently approved easy-to-use Wako β-D-glucan assay to that of the labour-intensive, time-consuming, and costly Fungitell assay in patients with eumycetoma. They showed that when using the optimized cut-off value (5.5 pg/ml) for the Wako assay, the Wako and Fungitell assays had comparable performance in terms of sensitivity and specificity. They conclude that the Wako assay can be used in combination with current diagnostic tools, but needs to be used in combination with other tests to differentiate between actinomycetoma and eumycetoma.
