BACKGROUND Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a common infection among women worldwide, being Candida albicans the most commonly isolated species. Therefore, controlling this opportunistic yeast is one of the key factors for reducing nosocomial infection. AIMS We investigated several virulence properties of 28 vaginal strains of Candida isolated from Tunisian women suffering from vulvovaginitis. We ...

The majority of HIV-infected patients develop Candida spp-associated clinical oral lesions. Studies have shown that asymptomatic oral colonization of Candida spp may lead to oral lesions or become a source of disseminated infections. The aim of this study was to verify the effects of periodontal conditions on Candida spp prevalence and Candida spp carriage in the oral cavity of HIV-infected pat...

Background and Purpose: By using advanced detection/identification methods, the list of emerging uncommon opportunistic yeast infections is rapidly expanding worldwide. Our aim in the present study was sequence-based species delineation of previously unidentified yeasts obtained from a clinically yeast collection. Materials and Methods: A total of twenty three out of the 855 (5.7%) yeast isolat...

Background and Aims: Different Candida species, especially Candida albicans have been known as part of human oral cavity normal flora. Changes in the oral environment resulting from tooth loss or denture application can affect oral micro-flora. The general purpose of the current study was to determine Candida species occurrence rate in the oral cavity of denture wearer patients in comparison wi...

The fungal pathogen Candida albicans can mate under highly controlled conditions. It can also undergo phenotypic switching. A recent discovery joins these disparate processes to reveal that 'opaque' switch variants mate 10(6) times better than 'white' variants.

Antifungal susceptibilities were determined from 80 urinary isolates of Candida species collected in 1994 and 1998. Our findings demonstrate increasing geometric means of fluconazole MICs and fluconazole resistance in Candida albicans and Candida tropicalis (those for Candida glabrata were unchanged) within the 4-year span. Amphotericin B and voriconazole MICs remained constant.

The "in vitro" antifungal activity of ozonized sunflower oil (Bioperoxoil®) was tested on 101 samples of yeasts originating from onychomycosis using the disk diffusion method. The oil was efficacious against several clinical fungal strains: Candida parapsilosis, Candida albicans, Trichosporon asahii, Candida tropicalis and Candida guilliermondii.

Two new cryptic sister species, Candida orthopsilosis and Candida metapsilosis, were recently identified by consistent DNA sequence differences among several genes within the genetically heterogeneous Candida parapsilosis complex. Here, we present data demonstrating that Pyrosequencing analysis of 20 nucleotides of internal transcribed spacer region 2 rapidly and robustly distinguishes between ...