special real-time pcr and conventional pcr for detection of rhino-orbital-cerebral mucormycosis

Background: mucormycosis is an invasive fungal infection that occurs in immunodeficiency patients and belongs to infections caused by mucoral fungi, such as rhizopus and rhizomucor. objectives: this study investigated the identification and detection of the mucor fungus in tissue samples and other samples by the real-time polymerase chain reaction (pcr) method. methods: this was a cross-sectional-descriptive study. a total of 80 tissue samples were collected from referring patients to diagnose fungi with the opinion of a specialist doctor. after extracting deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) from the samples, pcr and real-time pcr tests were performed using specific primers for mucor and universal-pan and compared to culture. the results were confirmed by sequencing. results: in this study, 80 samples were examined. in the pcr method, 74 and 75 cases of fungi were confirmed from the dna obtained from the colonies and tissues, respectively. by using a specific primer for mucor, 12 patients were reported as positive for mucor. additionally, 76 and 77 cases of fungi were confirmed in the real-time pcr method from the dna obtained from the colonies and tissues, respectively, and positive cases were reported. by using specific primers and the real-time pcr test for mucor, 16 cases of mucor were reported from colonies, and 15 cases of mucor were reported positive from tissues. conclusions: this study showed that real-time pcr and pcr are high-speed and more accurate methods than the culture test in identifying its species and have acceptable results in clinical cases.