Abstract
Candida auris is an emerging pathogen with resistance to many commonly used antifungal agents. Infections with C. auris require rapid and reliable detection methods to initiate successful medical treatment and contain hospital outbreaks. Conventional identification methods are prone to errors and can lead to misidentifications. PCR-based assays, in turn, can provide reliable results with low turnaround times. However, only limited data are available on the performance of commercially available assays for C. auris detection. In the present study, the two commercially available PCR assays AurisID (OLM, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) and Fungiplex Candida Auris RUO Real-Time PCR (Bruker, Bremen, Germany) were challenged with 29 C. auris isolates from all five clades and eight other Candida species as controls. AurisID reliably detected C. auris with a limit of detection (LoD) of 1 genome copies/reaction. However, false positive results were obtained with high DNA amounts of the closely related species C. haemulonii, C. duobushaemulonii and C. pseudohaemulonii. The Fungiplex Candida Auris RUO Real-Time PCR kit detected C. auris with an LoD of 9 copies/reaction. No false positive results were obtained with this assay. In addition, C. auris could also be detected in human blood samples spiked with pure fungal cultures by both kits. In summary, both kits could detect C. auris-DNA at low DNA concentrations but differed slightly in their limits of detection and specificity.
Highlights
Whereas the most common species C. albicans can usually be successfully treated with antifungal agents, other species such as C. auris, C. glabrata, and C. krusei may be less susceptible or resistant to antifungals including different azoles or amphotericin B [2,3,4,5,6]
Besides the limited therapeutic options, C. auris shows high transmission rates in nosocomial environments [8] regularly leading to hospital outbreaks, possibly due to effective biofilm formation on biotic and abiotic surfaces [9]
C. pseudohaemulonii as well as 10 isolates of the more distantly related species C. albicans, C. glabrata, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis and C. tropicalis were tested as controls
Summary
Whereas the most common species C. albicans can usually be successfully treated with antifungal agents, other species such as C. auris, C. glabrata, and C. krusei may be less susceptible or resistant to antifungals including different azoles or amphotericin B [2,3,4,5,6]. Besides the limited therapeutic options, C. auris shows high transmission rates in nosocomial environments [8] regularly leading to hospital outbreaks, possibly due to effective biofilm formation on biotic and abiotic surfaces [9]. These two characteristics—multidrug resistance and effective transmission—underline the need for rapid and reliable detection of C. auris in clinical samples
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