Fungemia in the immunocompromised host: Changing patterns, antigenemia, high mortality

Abstract

Fungemias were reviewed in 110 immunocompromised patients hospitalized between November 1, 1974, and December 31, 1977, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). The incidence of Candida tropicalis fungemia increased each year. Seventy-six percent of the patients with C. tropicalis fungemia and 32.5 percent of those with C. albicans fungemia had either leukemia or lymphoma. Seventy-seven percent of the C. parapsilosis fungemias were related to total parenteral nutrition. Thirty-seven percent of the patients with C. albicans fungemia were receiving oral prophylactic nystatin therapy. The source of fungemia was often difficult to determine: in 60 percent of the patients, only blood cultures were positive for C. tropicalis or Torulopsis glabrata; no cultures were positive for the fungus from any other site before the episode occurred. Serologic tests, including a highly sensitive passive hemagglutination test, showed fourfold increases in titer only inconsistently. A passive hemagglutination-inhibition test for circulating antigen was positive in 50.9 percent of 57 patients with fungemia who were tested and may be a valid indication for treatment. Fungemia usually represented a severe and often fatal disease. The over-all mortality of the 110 patients with fungemia was 79 percent whereas only 23 percent of the patients with C. parapsilosis fungemia died. Among the patients who received more than 200 mg of amphotericin B, 71 percent died despite treatment.