Fungal infections involving subcutaneous tissue often develop following a penetrating wound through the skin. The etiological agents are usually soil fungi or of plant material decomposers. Mycetoma and chromoblastomycosis are common in subtropical and tropical regions of the world but rare in Europe where subcutaneous infections have a different epidemiology. This work aims to evaluate the epidemiology of cutaneous and subcutaneous infections diagnosed in our laboratory during a 5 year period. We performed a retrospective analysis of cases of cutaneous and/or subcutaneous infections received for mycological examination between 2013 and 2017. Fifteen cases of cutaneous and/or subcutaneous infections were diagnosed and analyzed (gender distribution: 8 male, 7 female). The patients’ average age was 62 years old and the median age was 69 years old. An underlying immunodepression was present in 40% of the cases (N=6); In 53% of the cases (N=8) the patients had no underlying disease and 7% (N=1) had chronic hepatic disease. Clinical manifestations of the cutaneous and/or subcutaneous lesions were: nodules, abscesses, or infiltrated plaques, observed in distal body areas. Eight different fungal genera of were identified from the cultures obtained: Alternaria (N=2), Aspergillus(N=1), Fusarium (N=1), Saksaenae (N=), Scedosporium (N=2), Schizophillum (N=1), Trichophyton (N=2), Thichosporon (N=1). There is an emergence of fungal species implicated as aetiological agents of these infections thus, infectious diseases physicians should suspect of fungal infection when observing cutaneous and/or subcutaneous wounds.

Fungal agents of cutaneous and subcutaneous infections - 5 years experience