The ICCA Study (Early Identification of Candida in Intra-abdominal CAndidiasis)

The high mortality rate of patients with intra-abdominal candidiasis infection is partly related to delay in anti-fungal treatment. The gold standard method for Candida detection remains the yeast culture on mycological media which suffers from a delayed response time (up to 5 days).

Consequently, in the routine practice, the decision to start an anti-fungal treatment is based on predictive scores such as the Peritonitis score. Whatever the score, they all suffer from a lack of sensitivity and specificity and could expose ICU patients to delayed treatment with negative impact on mortality. Once introduced and before the availability of the result of the culture, the anti-fungal can be stopped based on two serum measures of 1,3 beta D Glucan < 80 pg/ml. This strategy allows anti-fungal spare. Therefore, there is a room for improvement regarding early Candida detection and identification for the right choice of anti-fungal.

The calscreener (SYMCEL®) is a new diagnostic tool to rapidly identify the presence of pathogens in biological samples based on micrometabolic activity detection. The metabolic activity anticipates the future positive culture. To date, most of the experiments with the calscreenerTM concern bacteria. During the development phase, some experiments have been performed with Candida, mostly in vitro. Data of feasibility with clinical samples such as the peritoneal fluid are lacking. Besides, there is currently no library regarding the metabolic profile of Candida, in both albicans and non-albicans species. All in all, its routine use is currently impossible.

First results (unpublished data from our team) of metabolic activity detection in peritoneal fluid with known presence of Candida showed a time detection <1 hour. We aim to confirm these promising results using biological samples collected in an ongoing cohort study. We first need to describe the metabolic activity curves of different Candida species in order to constitute a library.

The heat production of each peritoneal fluid will be measured, and then compared considering the presence or absence of bacteria. Then, to explain the metabolic activity, a phenotypic evaluation of candida (growth and yeast-to-hyphae transition) and molecular evaluation (level of expression of virulence gene) will be performed.