ELECTROPHORETIC KARYOTYPE AND IN-VITRO ANTIFUNGAL SUSCEPTIBILITY OF CRYPTOCOCCUS-NEOFORMANS ISOLATES FROM AIDS PATIENTS

EIectrophoretic karyotype (EK) was used to type 13 clinical isolates o f Cryptococcus neoformans from eight AIDS patients. All of the isolate s were also tested for their in vitro susceptibilities to fluconazole, itraconazole, D0870, flucytosine, and amphotericin B by a broth macro dilution technique performed according to the National Committee for C linical Laboratory Standards recommendations. Although all strains wer e isolated from a limited geographic area, DNA typing showed a wide ge netic variation in this group of patients, yielding seven different pa tterns. Two patients in whom C. neoformans was isolated in the same ti me period shared similar EK profiles, suggesting the possibility of cr oss-infection. In three patients, sequential isolates were evaluated: in two of them, EK analysis showed the persistence of the same genotyp e throughout the infection, whereas from the third, two isolates of c. neoformans with two different DNA profiles were obtained. Despite the small number of strains considered in this study, our susceptibility data indicate that C. neoformans isolates are very susceptible to the new triazoles.