Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy
Open Access

Review Article

Combined Effect of Platelets and Anidulafungin against Aspergillus fumigatus Infections

Schiefermeier-Mach N¹, Bellmann R², Frealle E³ and Perkhofer S^4*

¹Educational Center West for Allied Health Professions, Innsbruck, Austria

²Clinical Pharmacokinetics Unit, Division of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine I, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria

³Laboratoire de Parasitologie-Mycologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Lille, Université de Lille, Lille, France

⁴University of Applied Sciences Tyrol, Austria

*Corresponding Author:

Susanne Perkhofer
Head of Research, University of Applied Sciences Tyrol
Innrain 98, 6020 Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria
Tel: +43 512 5322-76725
E-mail: susanne.perkhofer@fhg-tirol.ac.at

Received date: August 11, 2017; Accepted date: September 18, 2017; Published date: September 22, 2017

Citation: Schiefermeier-Mach N, Bellmann R, Frealle E, Perkhofer S (2017) Combined Effect of Platelets and Anidulafungin against Aspergillus fumigatus Infections. J Infect Dis Ther 5:334. doi: 10.4172/2332-0877.1000334

Copyright: © 2017 Schiefermeier-Mach, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in severely immunocompromised patients. Despite the existence of antifungal treatment IA mortality rate remains extremely high and may reach up to 80%. Previous studies have suggested important role of platelets in antifungal host defence. In vitro data show that platelets are able to attenuate germination, hyphal elongation and viability of Aspergillus fumigatus. Interaction of platelets with Aspergillus fumigatus induces differential expressions of fungal genes associated with stress response regulation, cellular transport and metabolism.

A new class of antifungals, echinocandins (caspofungin, micafungin and anidulafungin), have entered the market. Anidulafungin displays strong antifungal activity against Candida and Aspergillus species and has very few side effects due to its specific inhibiting effect on the fungal cell wall synthesis. Anidulafungin is currently licensed for the treatment of adult patients with invasive candidiasis. Clinical significance of anidulafungin for IA treatment has to be further evaluated.

Recently published studies have shown that efficiency of antifungal substances can be enhanced when combined with platelets. In this review we discuss the literature on the potential combined effect of platelets and anidulafungin against Aspergillus fumigatus infections.

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