Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 04 1996, 767-777, Vol 34, No. 4
SR Lockhart, BD Reed, CL Pierson and DR Soll
The following three basic scenarios have emerged for the genetic
relatedness of strains in recurrent vaginal candidiasis: strain maintenance
without genetic variation, strain maintenance with minor genetic variation,
and strain replacement. To test the frequency of each of the three
scenarios, the genetic relatedness of Candida albicans isolates from each
of 18 patients with recurrent infections was assessed by sequential DNA
fingerprinting with the following three probes: the Ca3 probe; the C1
probe, a subfragment of the Ca3 probe which hybridizes to hypervariable
genomic fragments; and the unrelated CARE2 probe. In each of the 18
patients with recurrent infections, the same strain was responsible for
sequential infections, suggesting that the predominant scenario is strain
maintenance. However, in 56% of these patients, the strain exhibited minor
genetic variations in sequential infections. These changes were not found
to be progressive. Rather, the changes suggest that substrains of an
established infecting strain are shuffled in sequential infections. Results
are also presented that in 45% of patients with recurrent infections, oral
and vulvovaginal isolates were identical, in 35% they were highly related
but not identical, and in 20% they were unrelated. These results differ
markedly from those for commensal isolates simultaneously cultured from the
oral cavity and vulvovaginal region of healthy individuals. Finally, it is
demonstrated that in all eight cases in which C. albicans was isolated from
both the male sexual partner of the patient with a recurrent infection and
the patient, an isolate from the male partner was identical or highly
related to the vulvovaginal strain. These results demonstrate that in
patients with recurrent vulvovaginitis, a single strain usually dominates
both in the different body locations of the patient and in the male partner
and that it is maintained through sequential infections. However, in
patients with recurrent infections, different substrains of the established
clone dominate in an apparently random fashion, a process that we refer to
as "substrain shuffling".
Copyright © 1996 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Most frequent scenario for recurrent Candida vaginitis is strain maintenance with "substrain shuffling": demonstration by sequential DNA fingerprinting with probes Ca3, C1, and CARE2
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242, USA.
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