Multicenter prospective surveillance of oral Candida dubliniensis among adult Brazilian human immunodeficiency virus-positive and AIDS patients

The incidence of C. dubliniensis in South America has not yet been determined. In the present study, oral swab samples were taken from 108 HIV-infected/AIDS individuals attending 6 separate Brazilian HIV-treatment centers to determine the incidence of C. dubliniensis in this population. Swabs were plated onto CHROMagar Candida medium and 155 isolates, presumptively identified as C. albicans or C. dubliniensis were further investigated. In a preliminary screen for C. dubliniensis, 13 of the 155 isolates showed no or poor growth at 42°C, and all them were subjected to randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis using C. dubliniensis-specific primers. We confirmed that 4 out of 13 isolates were C. dubliniensis, representing an incidence rate of 2.8% for the Brazilian HIV-infected population infected with yeasts exhibiting green colonies on CHROMagar Candida. This value is significantly lower than those reported in Ireland and the United States.