Antifungal Testing

Antifungal Tests

In general, there are 2 major classifications of antifungal tests.  They are Qualitative tests and Quantitative tests.

Qualitatives tests are tests based on visual assessment such as area of inhibition or stain.  These tests have the advantage of being easy to perform as well as easy for the general public to understand.  However, they are not as senstive and cannot be used for all antifungal products.

Quantitative tests have a numeric evaluation of antifungal activity such as a percent reduction or log reduction.  They can be used for a wider range of antifungal products.  The downside is that they tend to be more time consuming and more expensive to perform than qualitative tests.

The majority of fungal tests are qualitative.  They can be divided into categories: plate tests, suspended tests, soil tests.

Qualitative plate tests use agar plates.  Agar is a solidying agent made from algae and used to grow the fungi used in the tests.  The material is typically placed on the agar surface and the fungi is added on or in the agar.

Qualitative suspended tests do not use agar plates.  Instead the fungi is sprayed onto the material, and the material is hung in a humid environment.

In Qualitative soil tests, the material is buried in soil which contains many different types of fungi.  After the material is removed, the material is observed visually and sometimes a strength test is performed.

Types of Tests

There are many different types of tests including:

• Antibacterial Tests
• Antifungal Tests
• Antialgal Tests
• Antiodour Tests