Microsatellite Typing To Trace Aspergillus flavus Infections in a Hematology Unit

Abstract

Assessing the relatedness of strains isolated from patients and their environment is instrumental in documenting the source of preventable health care-associated life-threatening Aspergillus flavus human infection clusters. The present study aimed at identifying and selecting suitable microsatellite markers for A. flavus typing. This typing scheme was then applied to investigate the A. flavus epidemiology within a hematology unit in Sfax, Tunisia. Use of a combination of five markers made it possible to discern clusters of isolates and to substantiate the genetic diversity of A. flavus within clusters. Isolates from Tunisia and Marseille, France, displayed distinct haplotypes, indicating a highly significant geographical structuring of A. flavus. The typing of clinical and environmental A. flavus isolates in a hematology unit provided insights into its hospital epidemiology. From a heterogeneous genetic background, a cluster indicative of a clonal propagation episode within the unit could be identified. In two patients with invasive aspergillosis, the same genotype was found in clinical and environmental isolates, indicating hospital-acquired colonization and infection. In further studies, this novel microsatellite typing scheme might be instrumental in illuminating important epidemiological issues about A. flavus population genetics or epidemiology, including tracing the sources and routes of transmission.

Molecular characterization of aflatoxigenic and non-aflatoxigenic Aspergillus flavus isolates collected from corn grains

“…The RAPD technique has been used to detect genetic variability between isolates of A. flavus and related species (Batista et al, 2008;Gehlot et al, 2011;Irshad and Nawab, 2012) and to discriminate between aflatoxigenic and non-aflatoxigenic isolates of A. flavus (Lourenço et al, 2007;Gashgari et al, 2010;Sepahvand et al, 2011). The ISSR technique has been employed to investigate the diversity and population structure of A. flavus (Tran-Dinh and Carter, 2000;Batista et al, 2008;Tran-Dinh et al, 2009;Hadrich et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2012) and to determine the similarities and dissimilarities between aflatoxigenic and non-aflatoxigenic isolates of this species (Tran-Dinh et al, 2009;Hatti et al, 2010).…”

Microsatellite Typing of Aspergillus flavus Strains in a Tunisian Onco-hematology Unit

“…It mainly affects patients with acute leukemia, due to the depth and duration of neutropenia associated with the treatment of these diseases [4]. In Tunisia, the species most commonly associated with the disease is Aspergillus flavus [5,6]. The molecular epidemiology of A. flavus is poorly documented because of the lack of discriminatory and exchangeable techniques to type this fungus.…”

Genetic diversity analysis of Aspergillus flavus isolates from plants and air by ISSR markers

“…In plant-pathogenic fungi, ISSR technology has been used to characterize genetic diversity (Mahmoud et al, 2014), genetic structure (Rampersad, 2013;Gramaje et al, 2014), fingerprinting (identification) (Priyanka et al, 2014), population genetic structure (Hadrich et al, 2010), phylogenetic studies (Dutech et al, 2007), genome mapping (Chakravarty, 2011), and gene tagging (Ratnaparkhe et al, 1998).…”