Otomycosis: A Clinicomycologic Study

Abstract

Otomycosis is a common fungal infection of the ear that is seen in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. We performed mycologic analyses on debris and scraping samples from the external ear canals of 95 patients who had been clinically diagnosed with otomycosis. Seventy-one samples (74.7%) were positiveforfungal growth; two ofthese samples contained two fungi, bringing the total number ofisolates to 73. The most common pathogens were Aspergillus fumigatus (41.1% of all isolates), A niger (36.9 %), and Candida albicans (8.2%).

Fungal infection of the ear: A common problem in the north eastern part of Haryana

“…However it is more prevalent in hot, humid and dusty areas of the tropical and subtropical regions. This could be due to the high degree of humidity, hot weather and presence of dust in the environment, these features favouring the dissemination and growth of molds [7][8][9][10]21]. Pruritus was the most common symptom found in the otomycosis patients followed by otalgia, hearing loss and ear fullness, confirming the findings of earlier workers [8,10,22].…”

“…In our study we found 16% of the otomycosis patients had itching on other parts of body. A higher incidence of 35-50% of dermal fungal coinfection has been reported by other workers [7,28]. Dermatomycosis has been reported as one of the predisposing factor of otomycosis, which may be due to the autoinoculation of the dermatophytes from the infected parts of the body into the ear.…”

“…Among aspergilli, A. niger has been found to be the most common etiological agent followed by A. flavus and A. fumigatus, this finding is exactly similar to the finding of Mahmoudabadi [26] from Pakistan, Hurst [30] from Australia and Chin and Jegathesan [23] from Kuala Lumpur. A. niger has also been reported as the major cause of otomycosis from Iran, Ghiacei [25], Mogadam et al [22] and Turkey Ozcan et al [24] but slightly different from the findings of Kaur et al [7] who reported A. fumigatus as the most common cause of otomycosis. This mold has been considered more pathogenic than A. niger as A. fumigatus produces a hemolytic exotoxin which has the ability to alter skin resistance [31].…”

“…Kaur et al [7] in 74.7% patients and Chin and Jegathesan [23] in 74.6% patients. Ozcan et al [24] reported 65% of the patients positive for otomycosis, slightly lower than what had been reported by other workers.…”

Primary Otomycosis in the Indian Subcontinent: Predisposing Factors, Microbiology, and Classification

“…While some studies have reported otomycosis to be more common among young men [1, 5, 7, 8, 15] as in our series, many others have reported it to be so among young females [2, 3, 14, 16, 17]. In our series the male : female ratio was 1.7 : 1.…”