In vitro antifungal susceptibility of 374 Candida spp isolated from patients with candidemia during a ten year surveillance in a Southern Italian hospital
Iatta R
Inter-Universities Centre of Research - Population, Environment and Health - University of Bari "Aldo Moro", via Q. Sella 268, 70121 Bari, Italy
Abstract:
Introduction: A ten-year retrospective surveillance of candidemia on ICU patients was carried out in a University Hospital of Southern Italy. The aim of the present study is the determination of in vitro antifungal susceptibility of Candida spp isolated from patients with bloodstream infection.
Methods: In vitro susceptibility to amphotericin B, anidulafungin, caspofungin, fluconazole, itraconazole, posaconazole and voriconazole was performed on 374 Candida spp isolates by E-test, Sensititre and CLSI methods. Quality control strains (C.parapsilosis ATCC 22019 and C.krusei ATCC 6258) were included to check the accuracy and the reproducibility of the results.
Results: Most yeasts were susceptible to all antifungal drugs, with the exception of C.glabrata susceptibility to all triazoles and C.tropicalis to fluconazole and voriconazole. As expected, C.parapsilosis isolates were generally associated with higher echinocandins MIC values than the others Candida species.
Conclusions: These results confirms the different antifungal susceptibility patterns among species, so underlines the need to perform an accurate species identification and antifungal susceptibility testing of clinically relevant yeasts. Moreover our data suggest that two of the most widely used commercial methods (Etest and Sensititre) provide valid and reproducible results as demonstrated by the comparison of yeast isolates susceptibility with the CLSI reference method.
