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. 2012 Jan;4(1):30-4.
doi: 10.4103/0974-2727.98667.

Rapid identification of yeast isolates from clinical specimens in critically ill trauma ICU patients

Neetu Jain  1 , Purva Mathur, Mahesh Chandra Misra, Bijayini Behera, Immaculata Xess, Satya Priya Sharma
Affiliations

Rapid identification of yeast isolates from clinical specimens in critically ill trauma ICU patients

Neetu Jain et al. J Lab Physicians. 2012 Jan.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose was to evaluate the performance of a commercially available chromogenic Candida speciation media and the Vitek 2 ID system for the identification of medically important yeasts and yeast-like organisms in a routine clinical microbiology laboratory.

Materials and methods: A total of 429 non duplicate, consecutive yeast strains were included during the 3.5-year study period. The performance of the Vitek 2 ID system and a chromogenic agar medium was evaluated against the gold standard conventional phenotypic and biochemical identification method for speciation of yeast isolates from trauma patients.

Results: Candida tropicalis (64%) was the most common Candida species, followed by Candida albicans (14%), Candida rugosa (7%), and Candida parapsilosis (6.5%). Of the 429 isolates, 183 could be identified to species level by all the three methods. Agreement between the chromogenic agar method and conventional methods was 80% for Candida tropicalis, 100% for Candida rugosa, 89% for Candida albicans, and 77% for Candida parapsilosis. Vitek 2 had lower sensitivity, with agreement of 49% for Candida tropicalis, 100% for Candida rugosa, 39% for Candida albicans, and 31% for Candida parapsilosis.

Conclusion: Thus, in long-term ICU patients, an increasing trend of isolating nonalbicans Candida spp. continues. The chromogenic agar medium is a convenient and economic method to identify commonly isolated species in busy clinical microbiology laboratories.

Keywords: Candida; chromogenic agar medium; identification; trauma; vitek.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Colonies grown on CHROMagar Candida for 48 hours at 30°C: (a) C. neoformans, (b) C. albicans, (c) C. tropicalis, (d) C. guilliermondii, (e) C. krusei, (f) C. kefyr, (g) C. glabarata
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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