Emerging Saccharomycotina yeast pathogens Detection and susceptibility profiles

Yeast infections caused by either clinically uncommon Saccharomycotina yeast species or those that were previously not associated at all with human infections are reported increasingly. The implications of such infections are the challenges to diagnose infections caused by such species and, furthermore, to decide on the proper choice of the antifungal drug to treat or manage the infections or use them for prophylaxis. The increase of uncommon Saccharomycotina species reported from the clinic is not yet reflected in the availability of reliable methods to diagnose them. Another yeast genus associated with human infections is Malassezia that does not belong to the Ascomycota, but to the Basidiomycota. This yeast, in addition to the well-described skin conditions it causes, has also been associated with sepsis in neonates. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) affects 3-10% of the general population and there is evidence that the gut mycobiota is involved in the most common complain associated with this disease, viz., abdominal pain, but this has not been studied extensively. Mycobiota alterations in the gut have also been associated with IBS.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate antifungal susceptibility patterns of emerging Saccharomycotina yeasts and how this relates to phylogeny, to evaluate the efficiency of a naturally-derived antimicrobial peptide, human lactoferrin 1-11 [hLF(1-11)], against said yeasts, to develop qPCR-based diagnostic tools for emerging and neglected Saccharomycotina yeast-related infections as well as Malassezia yeasts, and finally to investigate the potential relationship of different Candida albicans genotypes and IBS.