Candida albicans
is a common member of the human microbiota and may cause invasive disease in susceptible
populations. Several risk factors have been proposed for candidaemia acquisition. Previous
Candida multifocal colonisation
among hospitalised patients may be crucial for the successful establishment of candidaemia. Nevertheless,
it is still not clear whether the persistence or replacement of a single clone of
C. albicans in multiple anatomical sites
of the organism may represent an additional risk for candidaemia acquisition. Therefore, we prospectively evaluated
the dynamics of the colonising strains of
C. albicans for two groups of seven critically ill patients: group I included
patients colonised by
C. albicans in multiple sites who did not develop candidaemia and group II included patients
who were colonised and who developed candidaemia. ABC and microsatellite genotyping of 51 strains of
C. albicans
revealed that patients who did not develop candidaemia were multiply colonised by at least two ABC genotypes of
C. albicans, whereas candidaemic patients had highly related microsatellites and the same ABC genotype in colonising
and bloodstream isolates that were probably present in different body sites before the onset of candidaemia.
