Ira F. Salkin

Multidrug-resistant Trichosporon asahii infection of nongranulocytopenic patients in three intensive care units.

ABSTRACT Trichosporon asahii (Trichosporon beigelii) infections are rare but have been associated with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from superficial involvement in immunocompetent individuals to severe systemic disease in immunocompromised patients. We report on the recent recovery ofT. asahii isolates with reduced susceptibility in vitro to amphotericin B (AMB), flucytosine, and azoles from six nongranulocytopenic patients who exhibited risk factors and who developed either superficial infections (four individuals) or invasive infections (two individuals) while in intensive care units. The latter two patients responded clinically and microbiologically to AMB treatment. All six isolates were closely related according to random amplified polymorphic DNA studies and showed 71% similarity by amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis, suggesting a common nosocomial origin. We also review the literature pertaining toT. asahii infections and discuss the salient characteristics of this fungus and recent taxonomic proposals for the genus.

Cokeromyces recurvatus as a human pathogenic fungus: case report and critical review of the published literature.

During the past few years several rarely encountered taxa of zygomycete fungi (Mucorales and Entomophthorales) have been implicated in the etiology of human disease. Prominent among these is Cokeromyces recurvatus Poitras, which is usually isolated from soil and from feces of the lizard and certain rodents. 2 This fungus has been implicated as a potential etiologic agent in seven human cases in which the fungus was isolated from clinical specimens including vaginal secretions, alimentary tract, bladder, urine, pleura and peritoneal fluids. Recently C. recurvatus was isolated from stool samples in two cases of severe diarrhea in which the fungal elements were also noted in the tissue sections, thus providing the first evidence of its pathogenic potential in humans. 9 Because tissue invasion was noted in only two instances, it is still not unequivocally established whether the fungus is a colonizer of the affected tissue or a chance contaminant. We describe a case in which C. recurvatus was isolated on two occasions from an abscess and drainage fluid from a 9-year-old patient with a perforated Meckel’s diverticulum. The patient responded to surgical intervention and antifungal therapy leading to full recovery.

Madurella pseudomycetomatis: an Invalidly Published Name

The taxon Madurella pseudomycetomatis was recently proposed as a new species in a paper by Yan et al. ([2][1]). It was isolated from black granules of the discharging sinuses on the lower jaw of a 27-year-old patient from China. Based on sequence data of the multiloci of ribosomal DNA (rDNA), the