Use of DNA fingerprinting and biotyping methods to study a Candida albicans outbreak in a neonatal intensive care unit

The Ins and Outs of DNA Fingerprinting the Infectious Fungi

“…In addition to this general observation, several very interesting and potentially important observations have been made on the basis of DNA fingerprinting. In several studies of candidemias, the DNA fingerprints of isolates from some health care workers matched those causing the candidemias (8,22,29,94,410). For example, Doebbeling et al (94) found, using RFLP patterns, that C. tropicalis isolates from eight sternal wound infections were similar to each other and to an isolate from the scrub nurse.…”

“…Subsequent studies of nosocomial Candida infections using a variety of DNA fingerprinting methods, however, have provided a variety of scenarios. In the majority of these studies, it was demonstrated that no single Candida strain was responsible for the majority of candidemias in a particular hospital or intensive care unit (7,29,38,161,184,400,401,410,438). In a minority of these studies, however, single strains were found to be responsible for selective outbreaks (22,84,93,94,162,187,266,297,306,319,321,412,436).…”

A new method of antibiotyping yeasts for subspecies discrimination and distribution in human clinical specimens

“…Methods based on the analysis of phenotypic characteristics (biotyping methods) include enzyme typing [6][7][8], morphotyping [9][10][11], resistotyping [12][13][14], serotyping [15,16], killer yeast typing [17], and isoenzyme analysis [18,19], while analysis of genomic characteristics, include karyotyping [20,21], DNA restriction fragment length polymorphism and DNA fingerprinting using specific DNA probes or random amplification of polymorphic DNA [16,[22][23][24]. Isoenzyme analysis, karyotyping and the use of DNA probes are very useful because of their high discriminatory power [16]. Attempts have been made to detect a possible correlation of some C. albicans or other Candida species types with the virulence of the isolates [5,10,16,21].…”

“…Isoenzyme analysis, karyotyping and the use of DNA probes are very useful because of their high discriminatory power [16]. Attempts have been made to detect a possible correlation of some C. albicans or other Candida species types with the virulence of the isolates [5,10,16,21]. However, these typing methods are generally considered to be too variable, labor intensive, and slow to be of practical value in epidemiological investigations [1].…”

Cluster of Candida parapsilosis primary bloodstream infection in a neonatal intensive care unit

“…In the NICU setting, there are several reports of Candida albicans nosocomial cross infection [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. However, few studies using molecular DNA-based typing methods have demonstrated clusters of hematogenous candidiasis due to non-albicans species in such a population [15,[18][19][20].…”