Mucormycosis is a deep-seated fungal infection that mainly develops in patients with severe immunodeficiencies such as those with malignant hematological diseases. Despite poor prognosis, there is no reliable and minimally invasive diagnostic method—such as serodiagnosis—for making a clinical decision regarding the condition. As early diagnosis and early treatment improve the prognosis of mucormycosis, the development of a sensitive early diagnostic method is important. We had previously identified a Rhizopus-specific antigen (RSA) by signal sequence trapping and retrovirus-mediated expression (SST-REX), and evaluated its utility as a diagnostic antigen by constructing a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) system to detect serum RSA levels in inoculated mice. In this study, we used the RSA-specific rabbit monoclonal antibodies generated by novel hybridoma technology to improve the sensitivity of the ELISA system. We observed an increase in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) levels of RSA in mouse model 1 day after inoculation, suggesting that this newly developed monoclonal antibody-based ELISA system may be useful for the diagnosis of mucormycosis in the early stages of infection. In addition, we measured RSA levels in human serum and BALF, and found that serum RSA level was higher in mucormycosis patients (15.1 ng/ml) than that in invasive pulmonary aspergillosis patients (0.53 ng/ml) and the negative control (0.49 ng/ml). Our results suggest that RSA may be a powerful tool for the diagnosis of pulmonary mucormycosis, and its differentiation from other deep-seated mycoses such as aspergillosis.

中文翻译：

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在人和鼠血清以及支气管肺泡灌洗液中检测根霉特异性抗原。

毛霉菌病是一种深层真菌感染，主要在严重免疫缺陷的患者（如恶性血液病患者）中发展。尽管预后较差，但尚无可靠且微创的诊断方法（如血清诊断）来做出有关疾病的临床决策。随着早期诊断和早期治疗改善毛霉菌病的预后，开发敏感的早期诊断方法很重要。我们之前已经确定了根瘤菌信号序列捕获和逆转录病毒介导的表达（SST-REX）鉴定特异性抗原（RSA），并通过构建夹心酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）系统来检测接种小鼠的血清RSA水平，评估其作为诊断抗原的实用性。在这项研究中，我们使用了由新型杂交瘤技术产生的RSA特异性兔单克隆抗体，以提高ELISA系统的灵敏度。我们观察到接种后1天小鼠模型中血清和支气管肺泡灌洗液（BALF）RSA的水平增加，这表明这种新开发的基于单克隆抗体的ELISA系统可能对感染早期的毛霉菌病诊断有用。此外，我们测量了人血清和BALF中的RSA水平，发现毛霉菌病患者的血清RSA水平较高（15。1 ng / ml）高于浸润性肺曲霉病患者（0.53 ng / ml）和阴性对照组（0.49 ng / ml）。我们的结果表明，RSA可能是诊断肺毛霉菌病及其与其他深层真菌病如曲霉病鉴别的有效工具。