Malassezia infections in humans and animals: pathophysiology, detection, and treatment

Risk Factors for Malassezia Fungemia and Disseminated Disease Patients under total parenteral nutrition (TPN) and immunocompromised patients with increased length of stay (LOS) in intensive care units are at risk for Malassezia infections.\n Conclusions Over the last few decades, advances in research and technologies have greatly contributed to elucidating the role of Malassezia species in human and animal skin diseases and in human bloodstream infections. In particular, PCR-RFLP, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), AFLP, PCR-single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis, multilocus sequence typing (MLST, e.g., of ITS, IGS, chs2, and RNA polymerase 1 and 2), and MALDI-TOF MS resulted in the accurate identification and genotyping of Malassezia strains from humans or animals, thus resolving questions related to the geographical distribution of the infection agents and the characterization of strains causing outbreaks [61], [62].