Isolation and Molecular Analysis of Cladosporium Species from Siddi Tribal Community Residing in North Karnataka Region, India

Abstract

Dermatophytes are the common etiological agent to cause superficial mycosis, however non-dermatophytes like yeast and non dermatophyte mould (NDM) are emerging as potential agent to cause superficial mycosis. In this study, we evaluated epidemiological, clinical and mycological characters of non-dermatophytes causing superficial infection in the Siddi tribal community. A total of 1004 samples were collected from 937 Siddi community patients with superficial infection. In that 158 samples shown culture positive, Candida species (32, 20.25%) was the predominant agent to cause superficial infection other than dermatophytes followed by Aspergillus species (12, 7.59%), Fusarium species (10, 6.32%) and cladosporium species (2, 1.26%). Further, Cladosporium species isolated from tineacapitis infection was subjected to PCR, sequencing of ITS region and identified as Cladosporium halotolerans. Therefore, this study also revealed non dermatophytic fungi are emerging as important cause of superficial infection.