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Sabine Kespohl, Janett Riebesehl, Jörg Grüner, Monika Raulf

• Climate changes have promoted an increased fungal infection of maple trees with \(\textit {Cryptostroma corticale}\), the causative agent of sooty bark disease. The hosts of \(\textit {C. corticale}\) are maples, and since the early 2000s the fungus has been appearing more frequently in European forests, due to the droughts and hot summers of recent years. Infestation by \(\textit {C. corticale}\) discolors the wood and makes it unusable for further processing, which leads to considerable economic damage in the timber industry. Therefore, the occurrence and spread of sooty bark disease raise serious problems. In addition to forestry and economic problems, the conidiospores of \(\textit {C. corticale}\) can also cause health problems in exposed wood workers and they can trigger hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP). Since the spores, which are deposited over the entire area under the bark of infected trees, can spread during processing, exposed workers must take special precautions to protect themselves against exposure. If an occupational disease is nevertheless suspected following exposure to \(\textit {C. corticale}\), valid diagnostics are required to confirm possible HP and derive appropriate therapies and exposure reduction or avoidance. Diagnosis of HP is based on several criteria, one of them is the detection of specific IgG in patient's serum against the potentially triggering antigens, in this case \(\textit {C. corticale}\) antigens. To produce a diagnostic tool to measure \(\textit {C. corticale}\) specific IgG, which is not commercially available so far, spores and mycelial material from ITS-sequenced strains of \(\textit {C. corticale}\) was prepared and analyzed. These biochemically characterized extracts of spore and mycelial antigens were biotinylated and coupled to Streptavidin-ImmunoCAPs. To validate these diagnostic test tools the first step is to measure the concentration of \(\textit {C. corticale}\) specific IgG in sera of healthy non-exposed and healthy exposed subjects to establish cut-off values. Suitable participants were recruited and the individual exposure to \(\textit {C. corticale}\) and symptoms experienced during or after working with infected maple trees were recorded using questionnaires. Finally, diagnostic tools for serological testing in suspected cases of HP by \(\textit {C. corticale}\) were created and evaluated. The following article provides recommendations for the treatment and disposal of infected damaged wood and for occupational health protection procedures. Secondly, the diagnosis of HP induced by exposure to \(\textit {C. corticale}\) as an occupational disease is described including the verification of newly developed serological test tools for antigens of \(\textit {C. corticale}\).