Clinical Evaluation of the Newly Formatted Lateral-Flow Device for Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The study evaluated the newly formatted Aspergillus-specific lateral-flow-device (LFD), and compared its performance to the original prototype “old” LFD test using BALF samples from 28 patients (14 patients with probable/proven invasive pulmonary aspergillosis [IPA] and 14 patients with no evidence for IPA). A total of 10/14 (71%) of BALF samples from patients with probable/proven IPA resulted positive with the new LFD, including 8/9 with true-positive and 2/5 with false-negative results with the old LFD. All 14 samples from patients without IPA resulted negative with the new LFD; specificity of the new LFD was significantly improved compared to the old LFD.This work was supported by funds of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Anniversary Fund, project number 15346) and the Gilead Investigator Initiated Study IN-AT-131-1939. This work has also partly been carried out with the K1 COMET Competence Center CBmed, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT); the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW); Land Steiermark (Department 12, Business and Innovation); the Styrian Business Promotion Agency (SFG); and the Vienna Business Agency. The COMET program is executed by the FFG (The Austrian Research Promotion Agency, project number 844609). LFD tests used in this study were provided by OLM Diagnostics. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, decision to publish, in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication