Fungal culture

Most fungal culture submissions are requests for skin and ear fungal tests but we also provide general fungal culture testing for other specimens including post-mortem tissues.

Most commonly performed tests in our laboratory are:

• Wet preps: microscopic examination (including ringworm arthrospore identification)
• Skin scraping or hair - general fungal culture
• Yeast cultures - species level identification
• Dermatophytes - culture and identification
• Cryptococcus spp. testing (ink stain, antigen detection, culture, identification).

Identification of fungal isolates is performed by matrix-assisted laser desorption or ionisation (MALDI) or matrix-assisted laser desorption or ionisation time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Occasionally, molecular identification is performed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which targets the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) region of the ribosomal deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (PCR and sequencing).