Comparative in vitro activities of eight antifungal drugs against a national collection of clinical Candida parapsilosis complex

Candida parapsilosis is one of the most common non-albicans Candida species which can caused nosocomial infection particularly in hospitalized patients. Despite an increasing number of infections due to this species, the molecular epidemiology of clinical strains has not been well studied. We used a panel of six microsatellite markers to analyze the genetic diversity of clinical C. parapsilosis isolates from Iran. The STR typing of 81 C. parapsilosis isolates demonstrated 68 separate genotypes. Among all genotypes, 57 genotypes were observed once and the remaining 11 genotypes were identified multiple times. The panel of all six markers combined yielded a diversity index of 0.995187. The heterogeneity was observed among Iranian and the Netherlands clinical C. parapsilosis isolates. However, the high genetic diversity of Iranian C. parapsilosis isolates was observed. Therefore, molecular epidemiology could be useful for screening during outbreak investigation where this species is involved.