Topical application of imiquimod as a treatment for chromoblastomycosis.

Chromoblastomycosis is a subcutaneous mycosis that remains a therapeutic challenge, with no standard treatment and high rates of relapse. On the basis of our recent discoveries in mouse models, we tested the efficacy of topical applications of imiquimod to treat patients afflicted with this chronic fungal infection. We report results of treatment for the first 4 recipients of topical imiquimod, all of whom displayed a marked improvement of their lesions, both with and without concurrent oral antifungal therapy.

The use of glucan as immunostimulant in the treatment of a severe case of chromoblastomycosis.

We report the case of an alternative treatment for a patient with a severe form of chromoblastomycosis that responded poorly to the traditional antifungal therapy. We hereby show, in this study, the improvement of lesions after treatment with itraconazole associated with an intramuscular administration of glucan. We observed that the regression of lesions was associated with an improvement of the cellular immune response. This favourable response that we observed suggests that the therapeutic regimen we used might be an option for the treatment of patients with a severe form of chromoblastomycosis.

Simple assays for measuring innate interactions with fungi.

In recent decades, there has been a steady rise in immunocompromised populations and consequently a dramatic increase in the clinical relevance of normally non-pathogenic and commensal fungi such as Aspergillus fumigatus and Candida albicans. Understanding how these fungi interact with the host immune system is important for the development of immunotherapeutic approaches. Here, we describe a number of methods which have been developed to investigate the interactions of fungi with host leukocytes in vitro, including measuring fungal binding and induction of cytokines, phagocytosis, the respiratory burst, and fungal killing.