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/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/ionisation time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF or MALDI) mass spectrometry. Occasionally, molecular identification is performed using PCR which targets the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) region of the ribosomal DNA (PCR and sequencing).