Molecular epidemiologic surveillance and antifungal agent sensitivity of Candida albicans isolated from anesthesia intensive care units

Patients in intensive care units (ICU) are at risk of nosocomial infections. The incidence of nosocomial fungal infections has increased in parallel with the increase of nosocomial infections. Candida albicans is the most frequent pathogenic species among the fungi. The aim of this study was to make an epidemiological surveillance of C. albicans urine isolates which were isolated from patients who were hospitalized in ICU between June 2000 and October 2001 by antifungal susceptibility testing and Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. For this purpose, 38 C. albicans which were isolated from 29 patients were investigated for amphotericin B and fluconazole susceptibility with the microdilution method. The range of minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of amphotericin B was between 0.25-1 microgram/ml and MIC50 value was 0.5 microgram/ml and none of the isolates had high (MIC > 1 microgram/ml) MIC values. The MIC values for fluconazole varied between 0.25-16 micrograms/ml and MIC50 value was 1 microgram/ml. While none of the isolates was resistant to fluconazole, two isolates were detected as dose dependent susceptible. RAPD analysis was performed with two different primers in order to investigate clonal relationship, and 22 patterns were detected with one of the primers and 24 patterns were detected with the other. In conclusion, it is thought that the origin of the C. albicans urine isolates were mostly endogenous but exogenous spread might also be considered as isolates that were clonally related were isolated from different patients at the same time interval.