AUTHOR=Arastehfar Amir , Fang Wenjie , Badali Hamid , Vaezi Afsane , Jiang Weiwei , Liao Wanqing , Pan Weihua , Hagen Ferry , Boekhout Teun 

TITLE=Low-Cost Tetraplex PCR for the Global Spreading Multi-Drug Resistant Fungus, Candida auris and Its Phylogenetic Relatives

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01119

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2018.01119

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Candida auris</italic>, <italic>C. haemulonii</italic>, <italic>C. duobushaemulonii</italic>, and <italic>C. pseudohaemulonii</italic> are closely related and highly multidrug resistant yeast pathogens. The high cost and low accuracy of current diagnostics may underestimate their prevalence, especially in medical resource-limited regions. In this study, we used 172 <italic>C. auris</italic> stains and its relatives and 192 other fungal strains to establish and validate a novel multiplex end-point PCR. A prospective and a retrospective clinical screenings using this assay were further performed in China and Iran respectively. We identified the first isolate of <italic>C. pseudohaemulonii</italic> in China and the first isolate of <italic>C. haemulonii</italic> in Iran from 821 clinical isolates in total, without any false positive. Animal models of <italic>C. auris</italic> and <italic>C. haemulonii</italic> were established for validation. The overall positive rates of the assay for mice blood and tissue were 28.6 and 92.9%, respectively. Compared with previously developed assays, our assay is more available and affordable to the developing countries, and may contribute to a better understanding of the epidemiology of <italic>C. auris</italic> and its relatives in these regions.</p>