Differences by Resistotyping Between C. albicans Strains Isolated from the Oral Cavity of HIV+ and Seronegative Patients

Candida albicans is the etiological agent most frequently associated with oral candidiasis in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) carriers. Strain typification is important to disease epidemiology, particularly with simple, low-cost methodologies such as resistotyping. The present study was designed to use resistotyping to identify possible phenotypic differences between C. albicans strains isolated from the oral cavity of HIV+ and HIV-seronegative patients. Analyses were run using resistotyping (boric acid, cetrimide, sodium periodate, sodium selenite and silver nitrate) to identify phenotypical differences between C. albicans. Descriptive statistics was performed. Of the 149 clones isolated from HIV+ patients the most frequent (47.0%) resistotype was ABCDE. The most frequent resistotype (64.8%) in the 74 clones from HIV-seronegative patients was --CDE. Phenotypic differences were identified between the strains isolated from each group. HIV+ patients exhibited greater strain diversity. Although it has limitations, resistotyping effectively identified differences between C. albicans strains.