**Section 1**

**Epidemiology of Dermatomycoses and** *Candida* **spp. Infections** 

**1** 

*1,3Austria* 

*2The Netherlands* 

**Microsatellite Typing of** 

Birgit Willinger3 and Walter Buzina1

*Medical University of Graz, Graz* 

Astrid Helga Paulitsch-Fuchs1,2, Bettina Heiling1,

*1Institute of Hygiene, Microbiology and Environmental Medicine* 

*2Wetsus Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology, Leeuwarden* 

**Catheter-Associated** *Candida albicans* **Strains** 

*3Division of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna* 

*Candida albicans* is the most common pathogenic fungus and occurs frequently in the digestive tract (Bernhardt, 1998; Doskey, 2004). Vaginal candidiasis (Mohanty et al. 2007; Paulitsch et al., 2006; Sobel, 2007) is also a wide spread problem. This species can become invasive, causing infections on many different sites in patients with severe underlying

Catheter or shunt related infections caused by *C. albicans* (Pierce 2005) were reported e.g. by

The classical picture of yeast cells as unicellular life forms is based on the pure-culture model of growth. In their natural habitat microorganisms including yeasts are mostly organized in biofilm ecosystems which are often ´multicultural´, made not only of yeasts but also of bacteria (El-Aziz et al., 2004; López-Ribot, 2005; Ramage et al., 2005; Nobile et al., 2006). The possibility to adhere to a surface is a very important factor for the development of

Microsatellites, which are also known as short tandem repeats, are repeated nucleotide sequences with a length from 2 up to 7 base pairs. These polymorphic DNA loci are variable within a population and in this way multiple alleles are created for a single microsatellite locus. These different multilocus genotypes are used to distinguish strains within a single species (Applied Biosystems [AB], 2005). Microsatellite markers provide the possibility to discriminate strains of the same species and to trace their epidemiological pathways

For this study, pairs for three loci (CDC3, EF3, and HIS3) on three different chromosomes developed by Botterel et al. (2001) were used to compare the *C. albicans* strains which were found to produce a biofilm, with those strains which did not produce a biofilm on the investigated catheter material. The differentiation of biofilm and non-biofilm forming

Sánchez-Portocarrero et al. (1994), David et al. (2005) and Tumbarello et al. (2007).

fungal (Hogan, 2006; Verstrepen & Klis, 2006) and bacterial biofilms (Dolan, 2001).

**1. Introduction** 

diseases (Marol & Yükesoy, 2008; Odds et al., 2007).

(Botterel et al., 2001; Sampaio et al., 2005).
