[Comparison of different methods for species identification of genus Candida]

Different species of genus Candida can cause a wide range of pathologies, since mucocutaneous trivial infections to disseminated serious forms. Traditionally, taxonomy of yeast has been performed taking into account morphologic and physiologic studies, but they depend on the culture conditions of strains, what cause certain difficulties. Thus, recently, molecular biology methods have been tried. The aim of this work is to correlate taxonomic studies of most important pathogenic species--C. albicans, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis, C. tropicalis and C. glabrata--all of them performed by phenotypic traditional methods, commercial ones, and by a molecular method, PCR fingerprinting. Comparing useful methods for C. albicans identification, corn flour agar and germinative tube formation, no statistical differences between them are observed (chi2 = 0.5, p = 0.4795). By comparison between methods to discriminate different Candida species, physiological tests, CHROMagar, API 20C and PCF fingerprinting we observed no significative differences in proportion of accurate results, in test that can identify any Candida species, such as physiological assays, API 20C and PCR fingerprinting. The proportion of unequivocal results is greater than the obtained performing the CHROMagar culture method (p < 0.001).