• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.80-86
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• 2004

Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) typing was applied to the epidemiological investigation of 21 Candida tropicalis isolates collected from urine specimens of 11 patients and one healthcare worker, in an intensive care unit (ICU) over a 4-month period. Seventeen epidemiologically unrelated strains from 14 patients were also tested to determine the discriminatory power of PFGE. PFGE typing consisted of electrophoretic karyotyping (EK) and restriction endonuclease analysis of genomic DNA (REAG), using two restriction enzymes (BssHII and SfiI). The EK pattern was the same in all 38 isolates, while REAG using SfiI separated the isolates into nine types. However, 16 different PFGE types were iden-tified by REAG with BssHII, and the same results were obtained when the results of both REAG tests were combined. In serial urinary isolates from 10 patients, all strains from each patient had the same PFGE pattern. While the epidemiologically unrelated strains from 14 patients consisted of 13 different PFGE types, the 20 isolates from the 11 ICU patients fell into only two PFGE types (types Cl and C2), and these apparently originated from the two different outbreaks. All strains of type Cl (n = 12) were isolated from six patients, between November 1999 and January 2000, and all of the type C2 strains (n=8) were isolated from five patients, during January and February 2000. This study shows two con-secutive clusters of C. tropicalis candiduria in an ICU, defined by PFGE typing, and also demonstrates that a PFGE typing method using BssHII is perhaps the most useful method for investigating C. tropi-calis candiduria.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.121-123
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• 2019

Urinary tract infection is common in the pediatric population. The most common causative agents are bacteria, among which Escherichia coli is the most frequent uropathogen. Although fungal urinary tract infection is rare in the healthy pediatric population, it is relatively common among hospitalized patients. Fungus may be isolated from the urine of immunocompromised patients or that of patients with indwelling catheters. The most common cause of funguria is Candida albicans. Although more than 50% of Candida isolates belong to non-albicans Candida, the prevalence of non-albicans candiduria is increasing. Herein, we report a case of community-acquired candiduria in a 4-month-old immunocompetent male infant who had bilateral vesicoureteral reflux and was administered antibiotic prophylaxis. He was diagnosed with urinary tract infection caused by Candida lusitaniae and was managed with fluconazole.