Flavimonas oryzihabitans is rarely reported as a pathogen in humans. Twelve cases of F. oryzihabitans bacteremia were diagnosed at National Taiwan University Hospital over a 3-year period. The clinical features of these patients were analyzed, and antimicrobial susceptibilities and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) patterns of the 12 isolates were studied. Among these 12 patients, eight (67%) had underlying neoplastic diseases and all acquired F. oryzihabitans bacteremia while hospitalized. The clinical syndromes included primary bacteremia in 5 patients (42%), biliary tract infection in 3 (25%), and peritonitis, subdural empyema, infusion-related bacteremia, and pneumonia in 1 each. Polymicrobial bacteremia or concomitant fungemia was seen in three patients (25%). All the patients survived after antibiotic treatment. All isolates were susceptible to piperacillin, third-generation cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, and quinolones but resistant to cephalothin, cefuroxime, and trimethoprim. Susceptibility to aztreonam was variable (25%). The RAPD patterns differed among the isolates, indicating the epidemiological unrelatedness of these infections. F. oryzihabitans should be included as an etiology of severe nosocomial infection in patients with underlying debilitating diseases.

Twenty-one strains of Cryptococcus neoformans isolated from patients in Taiwan were characterized for serotypes and mating types. Slide agglutination test was performed with 8 factor-specific sera (Iatron Company, Japan) to determine the serotypes. Wheat bran agar (WBA) and malt extract agar (MEA, Wickerham) media were used for the mating tests. Twenty of the isolates were of serotype A, and one was serotype B. Except for 2 strains of serotype A, all of the serotype A strains mated with Filobasidiella neoformans var. neoformans, mating type a. The only serotype B strain mated with F. neoformans var. bacillispora mating type a in MEA medium. These data revealed the low prevalence (1/21; 4.8%) of C. neoformans var. gattii in Taiwan, a subtropically located isoland.

The intergenic spacer (IGS) of the rRNA genes was analyzed from the dermatophyte Trichophyton violaceum isolated from cases of tinea capitis in Taiwan and Iran. T. violaceum strains were cultured from different colonies, from single conidial colonies derived by dilution plating, and from micromanipulation of single conidia from clinical samples. A ribosomal DNA probe hybridizing to multiple EcoRI fragments was used to compare restriction fragment length polymorphisms in different T. violaceum isolates. The arthroconidia of T. violaceum that form in vivo during infection were shown to contain a single nucleus by 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole staining. IGS regions from an isolate cultured from a single conidium were amplified, cloned, and sequenced. The results identified that heterogeneity exists between IGS regions within a single T. violaceum genome due to different copy numbers of a 171-bp tandem repeat. This suggests that the IGS of T. violaceum is partially excluded from the concerted evolution of the rRNA gene locus. The heterogeneous character of the IGS regions in T. violaceum contrasts with the closely related dermatophyte Trichophyton rubrum, posing further questions on the phylogeny and the evolution of dermatophyte fungi.Dermatophytes are a group of fungi specializing in the infection of keratinous tissues such as skin, hair, and nails. Trichophyton violaceum is an anthropophilic dermatophyte (transmitted between humans) and is the major causal agent of tinea capitis (scalp ringworm) in many parts of Africa (2, 21, 29) and Asia (12,18,22).A lack of adequate methods for strain differentiation in T. violaceum has prevented efforts to address epidemiological questions in T. violaceum infections. DNA-based strain typing methods have long been recognized as the best approach to differentiating individual strains of pathogenic fungi, but a strain typing method for T. violaceum has not been described. Molecular strain differentiation making use of polymorphisms in the rRNA gene (rDNA) repeat region of the closely related species Trichophyton rubrum has been reported previously (13,14). In T. rubrum, there are two different types of subrepeat element (TrS1 and TrS2) in the rDNA intergenic spacer (IGS) region. Analysis of variations in the copy number of the two subrepeats was successfully applied in the strain differentiation of T. rubrum. The homogeneous nature of IGS sequences within genomes of any one strain made PCR-based typing amenable. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize subrepeats in the IGS of T. violaceum and to determine whether they would provide a useful method of molecular strain differentiation in this species. The actual outcome of this study was the revelation of a high degree of heterogeneity of repeat sequences in the IGS region of T. violaceum, raising questions about the evolution of rRNA in fungi. MATERIALS AND METHODSCulture and storage of T. violaceum isolates. Thirty-two randomly selected Taiwanese isolates of T. violaceum, isolated from hair samples submitted to the...