Genotype analysis of Candida albicans isolates using ALT repeat sequences obtained from patients with vulvovaginal candidiasis from Zanjan, Iran

Introduction and Objectives: Candida infection is one of the most common causes of vulvovaginitis in women. molecular characterization of the isolates is essential to understand the epidemiology of the infections and for tailoring prevention strategies. Materials and Methods: In this study, 140 patients with suspected vulvovaginal candidiasis were examined. Samples were inoculated onto to Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA) and CHROMagar. After identification, we reported a PCR system targeting 25S rDNA and ALT repeat sequences in the repetitive sequence (RPS) for genotyping of C. albicans. And data has been analyzed with SPSS. Results: In total, 41 (29.3%) colonies of Candida spp. were isolated from 140 patients with Vulvovaginal Candidiasis. The most common identified species of Candida were C. glabrata (56.1%) and C. albicans (39%).Genotype A3 C. albicans with 5 isolates (31.25%) constituted the majority of the isolates, followed by B2/3 with 4 isolates (25%) and A3/4 ، C3/4 و B3/4 with 2 isolates (12.5%) and C2/3 C3 with 1 isolate (6.25%), respectively Conclusions: The results showed that non-albicans species of Candida are more frequent than C. albicans in patients with vulvovaginal candidiasis. The present results indicate that PCR amplifications targeting 25S rDNA and ALT repeats are useful for rapid genotyping and distinction of C. albicans in small scale and epidemiological surveys. In this study, like other studies Genotype A3 C. albicans have been the major type. but reports about genes A, B ,C are different .The reason for this variation can be because of the genomic variability within the Candida species

Keywords:

Genotyping , Candida albicans , 25S rDNA , ALT repeat , RPS