Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Molecular BioSciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand1
  • 2 Public Health Laboratory, Countess of Chester Health Park, Chester , UK2
  • 3 Department of Oral Sciences and Orthodontics, University of Otago , New Zealand3
  • 4 Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia , Malaysia4
  • 5 Microbiology Division, Wellington Hospital, Wellington, New Zealand5
  • 6 Microbiology Department, Auckland Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand6
  • 7 Microbiology Unit, Canterbury Health Laboratories, Christchurch , New Zealand7
  • 8 Medlab South Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand8
  • 9 Corporacion para Investigaciones Biologicas, Medellin, Colombia 9
  • 10 Department of Pathology, CWM Hospital, Suva, Fiji 10
Microbiology (Reading), 1999 Sep;145 ( Pt 9):2405-2413.
PMID: 10517593 DOI: 10.1099/00221287-145-9-2405

Abstract

Epidemiological studies, using the probe Ca3, have shown that in a given patient population a single cluster of genetically related Candida albicans isolates usually predominates. The authors have investigated whether these local clusters are part of a single group, geographically widespread and highly prevalent as an aetiological agent of various types of candidiasis. An unrooted neighbour-joining tree of 266 infection-causing C. albicans isolates (each from a different individual) from 12 geographical regions in 6 countries was created, based on genetic distances generated by Ca3 fingerprinting. Thirty-seven per cent of all isolates formed a single genetically homogeneous cluster (cluster A). The remainder of isolates were genetically diverse. Using the maximum branch length within cluster A as a cut-off, they could be divided into 37 groups, whose prevalence ranged between 0.3% and 9%. Strains from cluster A were highly prevalent in all but one geographical region, with a mean prevalence across all regions of 41%. When isolates were separated into groups based on patient characteristics or type of infection, strains from cluster A had a prevalence exceeding 27% in each group, and their mean prevalence was 43% across all patient characteristics. These data provide evidence that cluster A constitutes a general-purpose genotype, which is geographically widespread and acts as a predominant aetiological agent of all forms of candidiasis in all categories of patients surveyed.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.