Systemic neonatal candidosis: the karyotyping of Candida albicans strains isolated from neonates and health-workers

Abstract

Candida albicans has become an important cause of nosocomial infections in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The aim of the present study was to compare C. albicans strains isolated from neonates (NN) suffering from systemic candidosis and from nurses in order to determine the relatedness between NN and health workers' strains. Thirty-one C. albicans strains were isolated from 18 NN admitted to the NICU of the neonatology service of Farhat Hached Hospital of Sousse, Tunisia and suffering from systemic candidosis, together with five strains recovered from nurses suffering from C. albicans onychomycosis. Two additional strains were tested, one from an adult patient who developed a systemic candidosis and the second from an adult with inguinal intertrigo. All strains were karyotyped by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) with a CHEF-DR II system. Analysis of PFGE patterns yielded by the 38 strains tested led to the identification of three pulsotypes that were designated I, II and III, and consisted of six chromosomal bands with a size ranging from 700 to >2500 kbp. The most widespread was the pulsotype I, which was shared by 17 NN and the five nurses' strains. The identity between NN and nurses' strains is very suggestive of a nosocomial acquisition from health-workers.

Molecular methods for strain typing of Candida albicans : a review

“…; Ben Abdeljelil et al . , ). Nevertheless, the resolution power of EK analysis can be improved by the prior digestion of chromosome‐length DNA with endonucleases before PFGE (Voss et al .…”

“…Currently, EK analysis is usually associated with other techniques, and it is shown to be the least discriminatory method when used for typing related isolates (Chen et al 2005;Ben Abdeljelil et al 2010. Nevertheless, the resolution power of EK analysis can be improved by the prior digestion of chromosome-length DNA with endonucleases before PFGE (Voss et al 1995;Clemons et al 1997;Shin et al 2004;Ben Abdeljelil et al 2012b).…”