Methods for studying the in vitro susceptibility of Candida spp. to antifungals

In recent years, an increase of systemic Candida infections was noted. Thus, identification and susceptibility testing to antifungals became of considerable importance. The technique of dilution in liquid medium developed by « National committee for clinical laboratory standards » NCCLS or more recently named CLSI « Clinical and laboratory standards institute » is the reference method most used. The European committee "European committee on antibiotic susceptibility testing" or EUCAST has made progress by determining the susceptibility of strains within a shorter time. However, the use of these techniques is limited especially in clinical microbiology laboratories. Other techniques for determining antifungal sensitivity have been developed such as those based on agar diffusion (E-test and disk diffusion), on microdilution (Sensititre yeastOne, Vitek 2 AST-YS01), on flow cytometry techniques and the MALDI-TOF.