Catheter-related candidemia caused by Candida lipolytica in a patient receiving allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.

Candida lipolytica was recovered from the blood and the central venous catheter in a patient receiving allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Two C. lipolytica strains from different geographical areas and the ATCC 9773 strain of C. lipolytica were used as controls. C. lipolytica was identified by standard methods. MICs indicated antifungal susceptibilities to amphotericin B, fluconazole, and itraconazole for all strains. In vitro testing and scanning electron microscopy showed that C. lipolytica was capable of producing large amounts of viscid slime material in glucose-containing solution, likely responsible for the ability of the yeast to adhere to catheter surfaces. Restriction fragment length polymorphisms revealed an identical profile for all clinical isolates, unrelated to those observed for the control strains. This finding suggested the absence of microevolutionary changes in the population of the infecting strain, despite the length of the sepsis and the potential selective pressure of amphotericin B, which had been administered to the patient for about 20 days. The genomic differences that emerged between the isolates and the control strains were indicative of a certain degree of genetic diversity between C. lipolytica isolates from different geographical areas.