eng Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Microbiological Research 2328-4137 2019-06-05 7 3 73 77 10.12691/ajmr-7-3-1 AJMR2019731 article Mohammed Elshaer melshaer85@mans.edu.eg 1 Amina Abd El Aal 1 Ahmad Elewa 1 Noha El-Mashad 1 Clinical Pathology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura, Egypt Background and purpose: The incidence of systemic fungal infection has increased considerably in recent years. It is of greater concern because they are often misdiagnosed. The study aimed to assess the diagnostic performance of ELISA and Polymerase chain reaction versus the gold standard blood culture in diagnosing systemic fungal infection. Materials and Methods: The study included 70 cancer patients at the Mansoura University Oncology Center clinically suspected to suffer from systemic fungal infection. Blood samples were subjected to automated blood culture, antigen detection by ELISA and PCR for fungal DNA. Results: Considering the different methods used for diagnosis of systemic fungal infection, 19 patients were positive by blood culture, 36 patients were positive by ELISA and 32 patients were positive by PCR. Both β -D-glucan and PCR exhibited higher sensitivity, specificity and accuracy with higher NPV than PPV compared to the gold standard blood culture which lacks the desired sensitivity and specificity. Conclusion: Rapid diagnostic techniques such as ELISA and PCR offer an accurate and reproducible tool for early diagnosis and treatment of fungal pathogens. http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajmr/7/3/1/ajmr-7-3-1.pdf blood culture fungi enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay polymerase chain reaction systemic fungal infection