Molecular Epidemiology of Candida albicans and Its Closely Related

We performed a molecular study to determine the occurrence of Candida albicans, Candida africana, and Candida dubliniensis in different clinical samples. The study provides new insights into the epidemiology of candidiasis in hospitalized patients in three hospitals in southern Italy. It also reports the first detailed epidemiological data concerning the occurrence of C. africana in clinical samples. The incidence of infection caused by Candida spp. has in-creased steadily over the last two decades, and Candida albi-cans remains the most common fungal pathogen isolated from clinical samples (14, 15, 19, 24). In 1995, Candida dubliniensis was previously described as being an opportunistic pathogen linked to oral candidiasis in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients (21), although it has also been recovered from other anatomical sites (7, 11, 12, 25). Recently, atypical C. albicans strains such as Candida afri-cana have been reported as cause of vaginitis from African, German, Spanish, and Italian patients (2, 5, 17, 23)