Mucormycosis diagnosis revisited: Current and emerging diagnostic methodologies for the invasive fungal infection (Review).

Mucormycosis, which is a life threatening condition, is one of the side effects experienced by post-COVID-19 patients. Early identification and timely treatment are essential to stop the dissemination of the disease, since invasive mucormycosis has a very high fatality rate and significant disease dispersion. Conventional diagnostic techniques, including clinical diagnosis, serology, histopathology and radiology, have limitations in diagnosing the disease at an early stage. This warrants the need for advanced diagnostic tools such as nucleic acid diagnostics, advanced serological tests (ELISpot), PCR (pan-Mucorale test) and multiplex PCR. These techniques have been introduced to identify this invasive fungal infection at an incipient stage, thereby helping clinicians to prevent adverse outcomes. The use of biosensors and micro-needle based diagnostic methodologies will pave the way for devising more point-of-care tests that can be employed for the detection of mucormycosis at an incipient stage. The present review discusses the current techniques available and their drawbacks, and the usefulness of advanced diagnostic tools. Furthermore, the possibility of using future diagnostic methods for the diagnosis of mucormycosis is highlighted.