Fungiscope

Introduction

Objectives

The incidence of invasive fungal infections is increasing worldwide. While the etiology of this development has not been completely understood, evermore invasive medical care as well as increasing numbers of long-term immunocompromised patients are considered major contributing factors.
To counter this development, diagnostic and therapeutic standards have been established for the most common fungi, i.e. Candida spp., Aspergillus spp., Cryptococcus spp. and Pneumocystis jirovecii. However, a wide variety of so-called emerging fungi accounts for a significant proportion of invasive fungal infections. Data on their epidemiology, pathogen biology and clinical course is scarce, often impeding evidence-guided decision making in the clinical setting.
To overcome these difficulties and eventually improve patient care, Fungiscope — A Registry for Emerging Fungal Infections has been created in 2003. As of January 2013, 311 cases have been entered.

Methods

Fungiscope follows a multi-modal approach, including the following components:

• Filing patient data in an online database
• FungiThek: Biobanking and reference analysis of isolates and histopathological specimens
• Epidemiological survey on the incidences of emerging fungal infections
• Clinicians´ search engine of the Fungiscope database
• Therapeutic antifungal drug monitoring for participating centers
• Providing clinical specimens to cooperating centers for defined research projects. Prior to sharing of samples or data, approval of the contributors of the respective cases will be obtained.
• Statistical analysis based on Fungiscope data only, or in cooperation with other centers/registries

Contributors are always welcome. The registry is open to everybody who encounters a case of a rare or emerging fungal infection in their clinical work and wishes to contribute the case to Fungiscope. Please contact us to receive your personal Fungiscope account.

Budgetary information

For each evaluable case documented by the participating center, a compensation of € 100 will be provided. If the documentation workload is too high, centers are encouraged to ask the study office for dedicated personnel sent to their site. For isolates made available to the central Fungiscope laboratory an additional € 50 per isolate will be granted to compensate for packing and shipping.

Authorship

Together we publish subsets of this cohort. Authorship is restricted to those centers contributing patients, or translational work or specimens to the subset published. For each contributing center there will be authorship positions available.