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. 2025 May 7;25(1):273.
doi: 10.1186/s12866-025-03894-9.

Emergence of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa among pet animals: a possible public health risk on the move

Hassan Aboul-Ella  1 , Tarek Mosallam  2 , Ojena Samir  3 , Aisha Ali  3 , Arwa Qasim  3 , Hossam Eldin Mahmoud  4 , Ahmed Samir  4
Affiliations

Emergence of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa among pet animals: a possible public health risk on the move

Hassan Aboul-Ella et al. BMC Microbiol. .

Abstract

Rhodotorulae are environmentally ubiquitous yeasts that were originally considered non-pathogenic. However, over the last fifty years, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa (R. mucilaginosa) has established itself as an emerging opportunistic pathogen incriminated in several systemic and localized infections in humans and animals. Most of the rhodotorulosis cases were linked directly or indirectly to an immunocompromising event in the affected cases. Nevertheless, recently, a few non-immunocompromised cases were reported. In the current study, performed throughout the period from April/2023 to April/2024, 450 samples were collected from pet animals and investigated for the existence and coexistence of Rhodotorula spp. in different clinically diagnosed infectious cases. 173 (38.5%) samples showed positive direct microscopic slides of different sizes of Gram-positive budding yeast cells, 21 (4.7%). Rhodotorula isolates mixed with other yeasts and/or bacterial pathogens were recovered from nasal passages and ear canal swabs collected from dogs and cats suffering from nasal affection and otitis externa. Laboratory investigations were based on sample collection, microscopic examination, primary isolation and identification, biochemical and post-culturing characterization, antifungal susceptibility testing, VITEK 2 Compact Identification System, DNA extraction, PCR amplification, sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis. Moreover, antifungal susceptibility testing based on the standard broth microdilution test was applied to the recovered Rhodotorula isolates. In conclusion, the present findings spotlighted a prospective insight into the role of the emergence of R. mucilaginosa among pet animals and its possible public health concerns. Clinical trial number: Not Applicable.

Keywords: Co-infection; Cross-kingdoms talk; Emerging fungal infection; Nasal mycosis; Otomycosis; Polymicrobial infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The currently conducted study is reported following (Animal Research: Reporting of In-Vivo Experiments-ARRIVE) guidelines. The guidelines of the (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee-IACUC of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Cairo University) were completely followed during any procedures involving animal use through the current conducted study. The current work did not require ethical approval, as all samples involved in this study were collected and submitted for further laboratory investigations through the diagnosis protocol of clinically infected cases by their responsible clinicians. All samples were collected using a standard noninvasive sampling protocol. No anesthesia or euthanasia protocols were used with the animal involved during this study as all animal-dependent methodological procedures were considered as no pain-causing procedures that ethically can be done on a conscious alive animal. Consent for publication: Not Applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Heatmap representing the antifungal susceptibility profile of each obtained isolate. AmB; Amphotericin B, FCZ; Fluconazole, VOR; Voriconazole, CAS; Caspofungin, MICA; Micafungin, and 5-FC; Fluocytosine. (S1-S21) representing the 21 obtained R. mucilaginosa isolates
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