Antifungal susceptibility testing of Candida in the Clinical Laboratory: how to do it, when to do it, and how to interpret it


Submitted: 11 March 2014
Accepted: 11 December 2014
Published: 30 June 2014
Abstract Views: 7412
PDF: 1909
HTML: 1945
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

  • Esther Manso Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Laboratorio di Analisi Chimico-cliniche e Microbiologia, Azienda Ospedaliera-Universitaria Ospedali Riuniti di Ancona, Italy.
  • Claudio Farina Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; USC Microbiologia e Virologia, Azienda Ospedaliera “Papa Giovanni XXIII”, Bergamo, Italy.
  • Stefano Andreoni CComitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Laboratorio di Microbiologia e Virologia, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria “Maggiore della Carità di Novara”, Italy.
  • Elisabetta Blasi Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Dipartimento di Medicina Diagnostica, Clinica e Sanità Pubblica, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
  • Marco Conte Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Laboratorio di Microbiologia e Virologia, Azienda Ospedaliera Specialistica dei Colli “Monaldi-Cotugno-CTO”, Napoli, Italy.
  • Paolo Fazii Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Laboratorio di Microbiologia e Virologia, Ospedale Civile “Santo Spirito”, Pescara, Italy.
  • Gianluigi Lombardi Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Laboratorio di Analisi Chimico-cliniche e Microbiologia, Azienda Ospedaliera “Niguarda – Ca’ Granda”, Milano, Italy.
  • Silvana Sanna Comitato di Studio per la Micologia (CoSM), Associazione Microbiologi Clinici Italiani, Milano; Servizio di Microbiologia Clinica, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria “Sassari”, Italy.

Significant changes in the management of fungaemia have occurred in the last decade with increased use of fluconazole prophylaxis, of empirical treatment and of echinocandins as first-line agents for documented disease. The emergence of drug resistance in fungal pathogens has a profound impact on human health given limited number of antifungal drugs. Antifungal resistance in Candida may be either intrinsic or acquired and may be encountered in the antifungal drug exposed but also the antifungal drug naïve patient The variation in resistance rates between centers emphasizes that it is essential to have knowledge of the local Candida species distribution and antifungal resistance rates to guide initial therapy for Candida BSI. Moreover, all Candida isolates from blood and normally sterile sites should be identified to the species level. The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing have developed breakpoints and epidemiological cutoff values that are now established for Candida spp. Clinical microbiology laboratories will be employed commercial susceptibility assays, rather than reference broth microdilution methods and comparative studies are particularly important. Vitek 2®, Etest® and Sensititre YeastOne® provided a high degree of essential agreement and comparable sensitivity and specificity to BMD-RPMI for identifying resistance to azole and echinocandins in Candida spp.


Manso, E., Farina, C., Andreoni, S., Blasi, E., Conte, M., Fazii, P., Lombardi, G., & Sanna, S. (2014). Antifungal susceptibility testing of Candida in the Clinical Laboratory: how to do it, when to do it, and how to interpret it. Microbiologia Medica, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.4081/mm.2014.4888

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations