Diagnostic Allele-Specific PCR for the Identification of Clades.

is an opportunistic pathogenic yeast that emerged worldwide during the past decade. This fungal pathogen poses a significant public health threat due to common multidrug resistance (MDR), alarming hospital outbreaks, and frequent misidentification. Genomic analyses have identified five distinct clades that are linked to five geographic areas of origin and characterized by differences in several phenotypic traits such as virulence and drug resistance. Typing of strains and the identification of clades can be a powerful tool in molecular epidemiology and might be of clinical importance by estimating outbreak and MDR potential. As has caused global outbreaks, including in low-income countries, typing strains quickly and inexpensively is highly valuable. We report five allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (AS-PCR) assays for the identification of and each of the five described clades of based on conserved mutations in the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA region and a clade-specific gene cluster. This PCR method provides a fast, cheap, sequencing-free diagnostic tool for the identification of , clades, and potentially, the discovery of new clades.