Research Article Antifungal Susceptibility Patterns, In Vitro Production of Virulence Factors, and Evaluation of Diagnostic Modalities for the Speciation of Pathogenic Candida from Blood Stream

Copyright © 2014 Chaitanya Tellapragada et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Candida spp. have emerged as successful pathogens in both invasive and mucosal infections. Varied virulence factors and growing resistance to antifungal agents have contributed to their pathogenicity. We studied diagnostic accuracy of HiCrome Candida Differential Agar and Vitek 2 Compact system for identification of Candida spp. in comparison with species-specific PCR on 110 clinical isolates of Candida from blood stream infections (54, 49%) and vulvovaginal candidiasis (56, 51%). C. albicans (61%) was the leading pathogen in VVC, while C. tropicalis (46%) was prominent among BSIs. HiCrome Agar and Vitek 2 Compact had good measures of agreement