CONTRIBUTION OF MOLECULAR TYPING METHODS AND ANTIFUNGAL SUSCEPTIBILITY TESTING TO THE STUDY OF A CANDIDEMIA CLUSTER IN A BURN CARE UNIT

We investigated a cluster of cases of Candida septicemia diagnosed in four burn patients, Twenty clinical isolates of Candida albicans and t wo of Candida parapsilosis, plus eight isolates of C. albicans recover ed from nurses' clothes, were analyzed by antifungal susceptibility te sting and three genotyping methods (restriction fragment length polymo rphism analysis with EcoRI and Hinfl, arbitrarily primed PCR, and kary otyping). The high MICs of the azoles for all of the C. albicans isola tes tested suggest either a natural resistance of the endogenous flora or the transmission of isolates with acquired resistance, The genotyp ing methods demonstrated the involvement of four different strains, cr oss-infections with one C. albicans strain and one C. parapsilosis str ain, and identity between some of the strains from the patients and nu rses, The origins of the strains remain unclear, Our results show that the use of a combination of at least two different methods such as th ose used in the present study is recommended for C. albicans typing.