Postmortem diagnosis of Fusarium panophthalmitis by the polymerase chain reaction.

Abstract

We undertook this study to determine if a polymerase chain reaction-based test that we developed for the filamentary fungus, Fusarium, could be used to detect the organism in postmortem ocular tissues. We applied the polymerase chain reaction to amplify a target fragment of Fusarium DNA from formalin-fixed ocular tissues from a patient with endogenous Fusarium panophthalmitis. By using the polymerase chain reaction-based test, we were able to amplify the target fragment of DNA from the infected eyes, but not from uninfected control eyes. The technique appears to hold promise to be a sensitive, specific, and rapid method of diagnosing Fusarium infections.