Discovery of New Trichophyton Members, T. persicum and T. spiraliforme spp. nov., as a Cause of Highly Inflammatory Tinea Cases in Iran and Czechia

Abstract

In this study, we describe two novel agents of dermatophytosis and summarize the clinical manifestation of infections. These new pathogens were discovered thanks to long-term molecular epidemiological studies conducted in Czechia and Iran. Zoonotic origins of the human infections are highly probable, but the animal hosts of these pathogens are poorly known. Further research is needed to refine our knowledge about these new pathogens.

Cases of dermatophytosis caused by Trichophyton benhamiae var. luteum and T. europaeum, newly described dermatophytes within the T. benhamiae complex

“…Trichophyton spiraliforme is known only from a case in a Czech person who probably contracted the infection from a dog. 9 The lesions in the guinea pigs described herein (alopecia with scaling and crusting, located principally on the head) correspond to what has been reported previously. 3 The presentation in chinchillas was very similar to that of the guinea pigs.…”

“…3 A detailed mycological description of the T. benhamiae clade can be found elsewhere. 3,9 To summarise, the more widely distributed zoophilic species (T. benhamiae var. benhamiae, T. europaeum and T. japonicum) have a "T. mentagrophytes-like" appearance (Figure 4).…”

“…7 PCR products were sequenced using ITS5 and ITS4 primers 8 through a commercial service (Macrogen Europe). Using Mega 11 software (https://www.megas oftwa re.net/), ITS sequences were aligned with those of the species belonging to the T. benhamiae complex 3,9 deposited in GenBank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ genba nk/), and a phylogenetic tree was constructed by the neighbour-joining analysis. The robustness of the branches was assessed by bootstrap analysis with 1,000 replicates.…”

Trichophyton mentagrophytes ITS genotype VIII and Trichophyton indotineae: A terminological maze, or is it?

“…Taxonomy and terms change and evolve rapidly in the field of mycology. [21][22][23][24] Trichophyton indotineae/Trichophyton mentagrophytes ITS genotype VIII, notwithstanding the terminological confusion, is no longer restricted to the Indian subcontinent. Its presence as early as between 2004 and 2013 has been documented in India, Australia, Iran and Oman.…”

Subtyping Options for Microsporum canis Using Microsatellites and MLST: A Case Study from Southern Italy

“…Multilocus microsatellite typing (MLMT) is currently one of the most efficient typing tools available for dermatophytes because it is reproducible, easy to perform and suitable for large-scale epidemiological studies due to its advantages in terms of speed and cost. Microsatellites (short tandem repeats of two to six nucleotides) are known to be highly polymorphic and have been widely used for genotyping and studying the population structure of dermatophytes [6,11,12] and other pathogenic fungi (e.g., Aspergillus or Candida) [13,14]. However, studies on the genotyping and population structure of M. canis remain rare or were performed by using a low number of microsatellite markers or strains [3,4].…”