RESUMO
Acremonium species cause a variety of human infections, while Lecanicillium species have not been reported as human pathogens. We describe a pseudo-outbreak involving both organisms, highlighting the role and limitations of molecular methods in the characterization of rare fungal isolates. Repeated isolation of these fungi from patient tissue samples raises concerns about exogenous contamination in the hospital environment.
Assuntos
Acremonium/isolamento & purificação , Surtos de Doenças , Hypocreales/isolamento & purificação , Micoses/epidemiologia , Ortopedia , Complicações Pós-Operatórias/epidemiologia , Microbiologia Ambiental , Humanos , Técnicas de Diagnóstico Molecular/métodos , Micoses/microbiologia , Complicações Pós-Operatórias/microbiologiaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Aspergillus terreus causes invasive aspergillosis (IA) in immunocompromised individuals and can be the leading cause of IA in certain medical centers. We examined a large isolate collection (n = 117) for the presence of cryptic A. terreus species and employed a genome scanning method, Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) PCR to determine A. terreus population structure. RESULTS: Comparative sequence analyses of the calmodulin locus revealed the presence of the recently recognized species A. alabamensis (n = 4) in this collection. Maximum parsimony, Neighbor joining, and Bayesian clustering of the ISSR data from the 113 sequence-confirmed A. terreus isolates demonstrated that one clade was composed exclusively of isolates from Europe and another clade was enriched for isolates from the US. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence of a population structure linked to geographical origin in A. terreus.