Diabetic Mellitus as a Predisposing factor in enhancing infections by Candida species and their Antifungal susceptibilities

Abstract

Diabetic mellitus (DM) is a chronic metabolic degenerative disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia. Candidiasis is increased substantially worldwide over decades and is considered to be one of the causes of morbidity and mortality especially in diabetic patients due to long term complications, and becoming among the largest emerging threats to the public health in the 21 stcentury. The present study is designed to study different candida species isolated from different sources of diabetic patients and to examine their susceptibility to different antifungal drugs. The role of gender,age and obesity in increasing the incidence of candidiasis among groups of diabetic patients has also been examined. Among 300 specimens collected from different sources of diabetic patients 122(40.67%) showed positive results of different candida species from which C. albicans is the most common isolate 46(37.7%) while the least are those of C. parapsillosis 18(14.75%). Antifungal susceptibility of the isolated candida species showed that C. albicans is highly resistant to all of the antifungal drugs used in this study namely fluconazole, Echinocandine and vericonzazole. The least resistant to these drugs is C. glabrata. Interestingly males have higher isolates in both types of DM than females and that there is no significant role of age and body weight in the occurrence of candidiasis