Specific detection of fusarium species in blood and tissues by a PCR technique.

Fusarium species are opportunistic nosocomial pathogens that often cause fatal invasive mycoses. We designed a primer pair that amplifies by PCR a fragment of a gene coding for the rRNA of Fusarium species. The DNAs of the main Fusarium species and Neocosmospora vasinfecta but not the DNAs from 11 medically important fungi were amplified by these primers.