Comparison of germ tube production by candida albicans in various media.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Candidiasis is one of the important opportunistic fungal infections in human. Candida albicans (C.albicans) is the predominant Candida species isolated from clinical samples. In routine laboratory, C.albicans is diagnosed on the basis of culture, staining morphology, germ tube production, & chlamydospore formation on cornmeal agar. The objective of this study was to assess the reliability of different media for germ tube production. Material & Methods: The study was carried out on various clinical samples received in Microbiology department of M.P.Shah medical college, Jamnagar from January to July 2011. Among all clinical samples, 100 isolates of C.albicans were compared for germ tube production in 4 different media (sterile horse serum, pooled human serum, trypticase soy broth and Brain heart infusion (BHI) broth. Candida species were also identified by using culture, staining morphology, & chlamydospore formation on cornmeal agar. Results: In our study, among 100 C.albicans isolates, sterile horse serum gave 100% germ tube production, pooled human serum gave 93%, BHI gave 63% and trypticase soy broth gave 60% germ tube production at the end of 2 hours of incubation. Conclusion: This study shows that sterile horse serum is best medium for germ tube production of C.albicans and it can replace human serum which has its disadvantage in being bio hazardous with false negative reporting.