Antifungal Susceptibility Testing and Therapy

Abstract

The development of new therapies to treat fatal diseases is creating an increasing number of patients who have predisposing factors for infections by opportunistic yeasts. The rise in the prevalence of fungal infections has been the drive to develop and license several new antifungal agents such as new formulations of polyenes, new triazole agents and echinocandins. The availability of distinct antifungal agents with different activity profiles and the advances made in the diagnosis of mycoses and fungal taxonomy have led medical mycologists to recommend antifungal susceptibility testing techniques as routine methods for use in clinical practice. Commercial techniques are very reliable and useful to detect resistance in vitro to azole agents. Epidemiological surveys help to choose the best therapeutic alternative to treat yeast infections. However, these steps forward in the field of mycology have still not led to significant reductions in the mortality of infected patients. There is a need to develop new diagnostic tools that allow early treatment of the mycoses and to design therapeutic strategies to control these infections based on reliable epidemiological studies and sound clinical trials.