Biol. Pharm. Bull. 30(9) 1693—1696 (2007)

mon cause of fungal disease in humans. This fungus is known as the fourth leading cause of nosocomial infections. Over the last few decades, incidence of candidal infections due to C. albicans has been increasing, paralleling the growing numbers of immune-compromised patients. To the patients, disseminated candidiasis is sometimes a serious disease which often results in death. In addition, the fungus also causes local infections such as vaginitis and thrush. For medical treatment of the fungal infections, amphotericin B (Amp B) that has been considered as the drug of choice and the azoles are mainly used in common clinical situations. However, toxicity and resistance to these antifungal drugs are a major problem. In case of Amp B, an increased amount of Amp B must be administered to patients due to its poor permeability across the membrane, which can result in severe side effects, for example, renal damage. To lessen severity of the side effects, Amp B is often combined with other antifungal drugs such as the azoles, but data reporting resistance of C. albicans to the azoles have been recently increasing. Therefore, reduction of Amp B dose by combining it with a new product having anticandidal activity seems to be very important. It has been reported that polyphenolic compounds have antifungal activity. Okubo, et al. reported that black tea extract containing the polyphenols inhibited the growth of Tricophyton mentagrophytes and T. rubrum. In recent, other researchers showed that a polyphenol, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), had growth-inhibitory effect on clinical isolates of Candida species, but not on C. albicans. However, Hirasawa and Takada reported that EGCG inhibited C. albicans growth, revealing that the anticandidal activity was pH-dependant, and they also displayed a synergic effect of EGCG combine with Amp B as well. The above observations were all done under in-vitro conditions. In our Lab, we also had a similar observation of inhibitory effect with EGCG on C. albicans growth (our unpublished data). In this current study, we investigated anticandidal effect of EGCG on its own and furthermore combination effect with Amp B in a murine model of disseminated candidiasis due to C. albicans. In addition, we examined if EGCG could block the hyphal formation from yeast form of C. albicans as a possible anticandidal mechanism.