The Journal of Medical Microbiology, Vol 28, Issue 2 85-91, Copyright © 1989 by Society for General Microbiology

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Morphotype markers of virulence in human candidal infections

P. R. Hunter, C. A. Fraser and D. W. Mackenzie
Division of Hospital Infection, Central Public Health Laboratory, London.

A study of the morphotypes of 446 strains of Candida albicans, isolated from a variety of clinical specimens, is reported. The method was based on a morphotyping scheme that has recently been described, but not all of the potential characters were used in this analysis. By this limited code, 50 different morphotypes were distinguished, the largest group comprising 23% of the population. The simplicity and good discrimination of the method make it a useful typing scheme for C. albicans. Discontinuous colonial fringes were associated with strains from oral sites and deep infections. Significantly, 67% of strains from fatal infections were of the discontinuous fringe type, compared to only 11% of strains from other infections. Further associations between morphotype and anatomical source included narrow-coarse fringes in genitourinary isolates.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. R. Soll The Ins and Outs of DNA Fingerprinting the Infectious Fungi Clin. Microbiol. Rev., April 1, 2000; 13(2): 332 - 370. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				F. De Bernardis, F. Mondello, R. San Millàn, J. Pontòn, and A. Cassone Biotyping and Virulence Properties of Skin Isolates of Candida parapsilosis J. Clin. Microbiol., November 1, 1999; 37(11): 3481 - 3486. [Abstract] [Full Text]