Findings highlight the potential of plasma fungal cell-free DNA testing to support diagnosis of infections in and beyond the lungs.
MINNEAPOLIS and SAINT PAUL, Minn. — October 12, 2026 — The Journal of Fungi has selected a study by researchers affiliated with the University of Minnesota’s Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine and Zepto Life Technology as an Editor’s Choice Article, recognizing its potential interest and importance to the fungal research community.
The paper, “Extrapulmonary and Other Pneumocystis jirovecii Infections Diagnosed via Fungal Cell-Free DNA Using Giant Magnetoresistance Detection,” explores how testing fungal DNA fragments (cfDNA) in blood plasma may help clinicians identify infections that can be challenging to diagnose using conventional methods.
Editor’s Choice Articles are selected through recommendations from MDPI journals’ scientific editors around the world. Editors choose a small number of recently published articles they believe will be particularly interesting to readers or important within their research areas. The designation offers readers a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the journal.
The study examined four patients using FungiFlex®, a Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) assay from Zepto Life Technology that detects fungal cfDNA in plasma. In a kidney transplant recipient with an unexplained fever and elevated liver enzymes, testing detected P. jirovecii DNA in four consecutive daily samples, supporting an infection outside the lungs.
In the other patients, the assay supported a diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia, returned a negative result in a patient with colonization, and returned a negative result in a patient whose fever was associated with an abdominal bacterial process.
The Editor’s Choice selection draws attention to the potential of a minimally invasive plasma-based approach to supplement the diagnosis of Pneumocystis infections. The findings remain exploratory; larger studies are needed to establish diagnostic performance, and no single test can independently distinguish colonization from active infection.
The authors are Jo-Anne H. Young, Karam M. Obeid, Minggan Li, Hannah Sweet, Jacob Panten, Tiffany J. Huwe and Xiaoying Liu.
Read the Editor’s Choice article:
Journal of Fungi (2026), 12(6), 435.
https://doi.org/10.3390/jof12060435