Tinea capitis in Iraq: laboratory results

A school survey of 4461 primary-school children was carried out in which 204 cases of tinea capitis were clinically diagnosed. All cases were cultured and examined microscopically in order to compare the validity of the two methods. Microscopy detected 92 positive cases (45.1%), whereas culture detected 105 cases (51.4%). We also isolated and identified the species causing tinea capitis in our sample. These included Trichophyton verrucosum (38 cases), T. rubrum (22 cases), T. mentagrophytes var. mentagrophytes (12 cases) and T. tonsurans (11 cases). Our results are compared with other studies.