Detection of Pneumocystis jirovecii and Toxoplasma gondii in patients with lung infections by a duplex qPCR assay.

ABSTRACT: Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) and pulmonary toxoplasmosis (PT) are caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii and Toxoplasma gondii. The clinical symptoms and imaging of PCP and PT are indistinguishable. A duplex qPCR was developed to differentiate between these two pathogens. In testing 92 clinical samples to validate the performance of this method for P. jirovecii detection, it identified 31 positive samples for P. jirovecii infection, consistent with clinical diagnosis. Among the remainder of the 61 clinical samples with suspected PCP, yet showing as negative by the conventional PCR diagnosis approach, 6 of them proved positive using our new assay. Our new approach also produced similar results in identification of T. gondii infections, giving a result of 2 positive and 20 negative in clinical sam

SUBMITTER: Wu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8682901 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature