Comparative study of commercially available (1→3)-β-D-glucan test reagents

Abstract

Deep mycosis is an opportunistic infection occured mainly in patients with immune dysfunction. In clinical practice, the detection of (1→3)-β-D-glucan is used as an auxiliary diagnosis. In this study, we examined the test reagents available in Japan by two companies for the purpose of introducing this test into hospital laboratory. We compared the outsourced tests currently performed at our hospital with each reagent company. The basic performance of within-run and between-day precision, dilution linearity, and correlation between methods were similar to the previous reports. In addition, the comparison of the difference between double measurements of the same sample suggested that measurement errors were likely to occur in the low concentration range in both method A and method B. In this result, 45/69 (65.2%) of results in low concentration range were positive for one method and negative for the other method. This discrepancy in determination is considered to be due to the difference in proportionality between measured values and cut-off value. The medical record review revealed that β-D-glucan value fluctuated in relation to symptoms that suggested infections including deep mycosis. When selecting a β-D-glucan test reagent, we should select a reagent that is appropriate for the actual situation of the facility, including the operability of the measurement. The introduction of this test in the hospital is expected to lead to early diagnosis and appropriate treatment of deep mycosis.