Dermatophyte fungi are a common cause of skin, nail and hair infections globally, ranging from mild to cosmetically disfiguring, or even invasive in rare cases. Specimens requiring fungal microscopy culture for suspected dermatophyte infection make up significant portion the workload diagnostic microbiology laboratories. Whilst still considered gold standard, culture-based method is labour inte...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Globally, dermatophytes are the most common filamentous group of fungi causing cutaneous mycoses. Dermatophytes were shown to secrete a multitude of enzymes that play a role in their pathogenesis. There is limited data on co-hemolytic (CAMP-like) effect of different bacterial species on dermatophyte species. In this study, we sought to the evaluate exoenzyme activity and ...

The performance of a new commercially available duplex PCR, which combines pan-dermatophyte PCR with a Trichophyton rubrum-specific PCR, was evaluated. This Dermatophyte PCR kit, which requires one day for laboratory diagnosis, was compared with the conventional methods of microscopy and culture that necessitate up to 4 weeks for final diagnosis of dermatophytosis. We studied 177 nail samples f...

The National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) M38-A standard for the susceptibility testing of conidium-forming filamentous fungi does not explicitly address the testing of dermatophytes. This multicenter study, involving six laboratories, investigated the MIC reproducibility of seven antifungal agents tested against 25 dermatophyte isolates (5 blinded pairs of five dermatoph...

BACKGROUND A rapid, accurate screening test for dermatophytosis in cats is desirable in clinical and shelter medicine. In human dermatology, dermoscopy is used to identify dermatophyte-infected hairs by their characteristic comma hair appearance. Similar "comma-like" hairs have been observed in infected cats. HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of de...

background dermatophytosis is a cutaneous fungal infection with a worldwide occurrence. in dermatophyte infections, the release of keratinocyte cytokines, in the presence of dermatophyte antigens, causes an acute phase response; subsequently, the acute-phase proteins are produced by hepatocytes. mannose–binding lectin (mbl), an acute-phase protein, also acts as a kind of pattern recognition rec...

conclusions an increasing frequency of ndo compared to onychomycosis due to other causative agents has been noticeable over the past few years in iran. this epidemiological data may be useful in the development of preventive and educational strategies. results based on only direct microscopy, onychomycosis was diagnosed in 424 (39.6%) cases, among which 35.8% were caused by dermatophytes, 32.7%...