Luliconazole, a highly effective imidazole, against Fusarium species complexes

Abstract

Luliconazole is a new antifungal that was primarily used for the treatment of dermatophytosis. However, some studies have shown that it has excellent efficacy against Aspergillus and Candida species in vitro. The present study aimed to evaluate of luliconazole activity against some Fusarium species complex isolates. In this study, 47 isolates of Fusarium were tested against several antifungals including luliconazole. All species were identified using morphology features, and PCR sequencing and antifungal susceptibility were performed according to CLSIM38 A3 guideline. Our results revealed that luliconazole has a very low minimum inhibitory concentration value (0.0078-1 µg/ml) in comparison with other tested antifungals. Amphotericin B had a poor effect with a high MIC₉₀ (64 µg/ml), followed by terbinafine (32 µg/ml), posaconazole (16 µg/ml), caspofungin (16 µg/ml), voriconazole (4 µg/ml), and itraconazole (4 µg/ml). Overall, our findings indicated that luliconazole has great activity against environmental and clinical Fusarium species complexes in comparison to tested antifungals.

Keywords: Antifungal susceptibility; Fusarium; Luliconazole.