Background: The significant frequency of oropharyngeal candidiasis due to C. albicans in HIV-infected and AIDS patients and the undoubted differences in pathogenicity among strains, lead us to study whether a possible correlation exists between the phenotypic characteristics of the fungal strain and the blastospores adhesivity to the human buccal epithelial cells.
Methods: From 203 oro-pharyngeal swabs of HIV-infected patients, 133 C. albicans were identified among 159 yeast strains. Analytical strains delineation below the species level was made by the morphotyping method, assigning a morphotype code of three digits, each of which being expressive of one colonial fringe characteristic. To study the possible blastospores adhesivity differences, we have isolated 10 strains of C. albicans, chose according to the more significant colonial morphologies; they were mixed with oral epithelial cells obtained by scraping of 36 HIV-positive patients and 2 volunteer donors HIV-negative at the rate cells/blastospores of 1:20. Suspensions were filtered, fixed and examined by optical microscope (MO) for counting the number of blastospores adhering to 100 epithelial cells and the number of cells with adhering blastospores.
Results: The index obtained by comparing the two qualitative analysis was higher for these isolates producing a rough or very coarse lateral fringes.
Conclusions: This finding suggests that these strains may possess the highest adhesive properties, in fact the index decreases progressively to reach lower values for the strain not producing fringe.