Candida africana and its closest relatives

Abstract

Candida africana is a recently described opportunistic yeast pathogen that has been linked to vaginal candidiasis. This yeast was first described, in 1995, as atypical chlamydospore-negative Candida albicans strain, and subsequently proposed as a new Candida species on the basis of morphological, biochemical and physiological characteristics clearly different from those of typical C. albicans isolates. Phylogenetic studies based on the comparison of ribosomal DNA sequences demonstrated that C. africana and C. albicans isolates are too closely related to draw any conclusions regarding the status of a new species. Therefore, on the basis of these studies, some authors considered C. africana as a biovar of C. albicans even if genetic differences may be found if additional regions of genomic DNA are sequenced. The taxonomic situation of C. africana and its phylogenetic relationship with other Candida species is still controversial and remains, at present, a matter of debate. Our goal is to review the current knowledge about C. africana and highlight the development of rapid and accurate tests for its discrimination from C. albicans, Candida dubliniensis and Candida stellatoidea. Furthermore, through the analysis of literature data, we have found that C. africana has a worldwide distribution and a considerable number of features making its study particularly interesting.

Etiologic Agents and Antifungal Susceptibility of Oral Candidosis from Romanian patients with HIV-infection or type 1 diabetes mellitus

“…The final identification was performed using ID32C strips (bioMérieux, France). Isolates identified as Candida albicans or Candida dubliniensis were further verified with duplex PCR (Romeo and Criseo, 2011 (Kolecka et al, 2013).…”

Candidosis vaginal. Segunda parte:diagnóstico, tratamiento y situación de algunos países latinoamericanos

“…Con excepción de C. glabrata, el resto de las especies asociadas a candidosis pueden formar seudomicelios y C. albicans y C. dubliniensis además son formadoras de hifas. C. glabrata es conocida por su resistencia natural a los antimicóticos azólicos mientras que cepas de otras especies, entre ellas C. albicans, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis, C. guilliermondii, C. famata, C tropicalis muestran variabilidad ante los azólicos [1,22,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

“…El diagnóstico por la amplificación del genoma de Candida a partir de las secreciones vaginales, es específico. Al momento, algunos países europeos, mencionan el uso del producto CARPEGEN ® Myco Diagnostics, para identificar a diversas especies de Candida directamente a partir de las muestras vaginales, método basado en la técnica de microarreglos DNA-chip; sin embargo, no se tienen suficientes reportes que evalúen la confiabilidad y eficiencia de esa prueba en países fuera de Europa [28].…”

Use of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis for the identification of mixed oral yeasts in human saliva

“…The advantage of this primer set is its potential to identify intra-species variation within C. albicans. With further evaluation, this might assist with the identification of particular strains associated with disease (Romeo & Criseo, 2011).…”