Molecular diagnosis of biofilm forming invasive Candida albicans

Candida albicans is a multidrug-resistant fungal pathogen that is causing invasive disease in humans and causing high healthcare costs around the world. Invasive candidiasis (IC) is a serious nosocomial infection that causes significant morbidity and mortality in hospitalized children. The objective of this project was to estimate the prevalence of invasive Candida albicans fungus among the population and to study the effect of biofilm formation on its pathogenicity. Oral samples obtained by swabbing the oral mucosa (palatal mucosa and tongue dorsal) of all patients with sterile swabs. Samples were collected between October 2020 to March 2021, Oral samples was obtained 63 samples from Workers visiting a public health laboratory in Kirkuk, 20 samples from Cancer patients at the Specialized Center for Oncology and Hematology in Kirkuk, and 18 samples in patients ages 15-20 in Azadi Teaching Hospital. The results of current study showed only (22.2%) of workers, and (60%) of cancer patients found to be Candida albicans positive, and that the majority of Candida albicans isolates were producers for biofilm. The isolated strains showed two amplicons of product size of (550 bp) of 18 SrRNA gene sequence. We investigated two critical aspects of the biofilm formation ALS3 and SAP8 genes, (76.92%) of isolate of Candida have forms biofilm. The two strains were registered in the NCBI under the accession number of (Lc651376) for ALS3 gene isolate, and (Lc651377) for SAP8 gene isolate. Future study can be conducted to check the important aspects of clinical mycology and possible disease associations with biofilm production from C. albicans.