COMPARISON OF TWO CHROMOGENIC MEDIA FOR YEAST IDENTIFICATION

Objective: Usage of catheter, prosthesis, treatment with extended spectrum antibiotics for a long time, organ transplantation and immunodeficiency enhanced invasive Candida infections. Quite a few chromogenic media were developed for rapid identification of yeasts, recently. We aimed to compare performances of CHROMagar Candida (CHROMagar, France) and Rosachrom Candida Agar II (Gül Biyoloji Laboratuvar？, Turkey) for the identification of the yeast species. Material and Method: Totally 66 isolates including 22 C. glabrata, 16 C. tropicalis, 10 C. albicans, nine C. parapsilosis, four C. kefyr, two Saprochaete capitata, two Trichosporon spp., one C. lusitaniae isolated from various clinical specimens between September–October 2015 in Mycology Laboratory of our hospital were included. The colonies of the isolates were evaluated by considering the colony morphology, color and the existence of halo around the colony by two different people after 24 and 48 hours. Results: The isolates grew well on both chromogenic media, and showed clearly distinguished colonies. The sensitivity and specificity values for C. albicans were detected as 100% for CHROMagar Candida; 70-80% and 94.6-96.4% for Rosachrom Candida, at 24 and 48 hours, respectively. These values for C. tropicalis were 100% for CHROMagar Candida; 43.7–50 % and 98-100 % for Rosachrom Candida, respectively. Conclusion: CHROMagar Candida which can identify, C. albicans, C. tropicalis and C. glabrata with high sensitivity and specificity rates was concluded as a reliable medium for identification of Candida species. Rosachrom Candida may be thought to be an alternative to CHROMagar Candida for C. albicans identification but its performance in identification of C. tropicalis was not found sufficient