Cariotipos electroforéticos y análisis de los fragmentos de restricción de ADN genómico: su utilidad como herramientas en estudios epidemiológicos de Candida parapsilosis

: During the past decades, several studies have reported an increase in the incidence of nosocomial candidosis. In a prospective study, performed at the Departamento de Micologia, INEI, ANLIS Dr. C. G. Malbran and the Servicio de Neonatologia and Microbiologia, Hospital de Ninos Sor Maria Ludovica, from October 1995 to December 1996, 167 patients with candidosis were detected. Candida species isolated were C. albicans (53.1%), C. parapsilosis (26.5%) and C. tropicalis (14.8%). The aim of this work was to characterize the clinical C. parapsilosis isolates from pediatric patients hospitalized in two neonatal intensive care units from the same hospital and to evaluate the usefulness of electrophoretic karyotype (EK) and restriction endonuclease analysis of genomic DNA (REAG) using a low frequency digestion enzyme. EK of all isolates disclosed 12 banding patterns and REAG with endonuclease Sfi I showed only 5 groups. However, isolates from the control group could not be separated from the clinical isolates. The isolates within each dendogram group for EK or REAG were apparently unrelated. Our results show that EK yields better results than REAG, but that it falls short of the desired discrimination, which suggests that these techniques do not seem to be useful for studying nosocomial C. parapsilosis outbreaks.