comparison between phenotypic characterization and semi-nested pcr for the identification of candida species in clinical isolates

conclusions in this study, snpcr was specific and more sensitive than the chromogenic medium chromagar™ candida for the detection of candida spp. insofar as it failed to identify only a few isolates. materials and methods we used snpcr with universal and species-specific primers to detect candida species in the culture of clinical isolates. by using universal primers, we carried out the amplification of the 3/end of 5.8s ribosomal dna (rdna) and the 5/end of 28s rdna, including the internal transcribed spacer 2 (its2) and production of 350 to 410-bp fragments from 4 candida species, vis. candida albicans, candida tropicalis, candida glabrata, and candida parapsilosis. results the phenotypic identification system identified 60 (92.3%) yeasts isolates, including c. albicans (n = 33), c. glabrata (n = 14), c. tropicalis (n = 11), and c. parapsilosis (n = 2), and 5 isolates were mixed culture. by snpcr, 63 (96.6%) isolates were identified, including c. albicans (n = 37), c. glabrata (n = 11), c. tropicalis (n = 14), and c. parapsilosis (n = 1), and the species of 2 isolates could not be identified. additionally, snpcr for the specific identification of the candida species of the 65 clinical candida isolates revealed 70.3% results agreement with the chromogenic medium chromagar™ candida. background nowadays, due to the increasing number of immunocompromised patients, mycosis infections caused by candida species are on the rise, especially among hospitalized patients. objectives in the current study, the chromogenic medium chromagar™ candida and semi-nested polymerase chain reaction (snpcr) were compared concerning their ability to detect the species of candida in 65 clinical isolates.