Overview of Opportunistic Fungal Infections in India

Conidiobolomycosis in relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Invasive fungal infections in immunocompromised children suffering from hematological malignancies have been a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In recent years fungi other than aspergillus and candida are gaining importance. These emerging fungal infections have distinct epidemiological features and management issues especially in immunocompromised patients. Here we report the isolation of Conidiobolus coronatus, a rarely reported zygomycetes infection in a patient suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Conidiobolus generally causes indolent infection in the sino-respiratory tract. They are known to be angioinvasive and can disseminate. There is no consensus regarding appropriate antifungal treatment for Conidiobolus infection.

Human fungal pathogen Candida albicans in the postgenomic era: an overview

Candida albicans is an opportunistic human fungal pathogen and is responsible for candidiasis. Owing to the improvement in healthcare, the number of immunocompromised patients in hospitals has increased worldwide and these individuals are susceptible to infections caused by many pathogenic microbes, among which C. albicans is one of the major players. Currently, the complete genome sequence of this pathogen is available and the size of this was estimated to be of 16 Mb. Annotation of C. albicans genome revealed that there are 6114 open reading frames (ORFs), of which 774 are specific to C. albicans. This poses a challenge as well as an opportunity to the Candida community to understand the functions of the unknown genes, especially those specific to C. albicans. Efforts have been made by the Candida community to systematically delete the ORFs and assign the functions. This will, in turn, help in understanding the biology of C. albicans and its interactions with animals as well as humans, and better drugs can be developed to treat Candida infections. In this article, we review updates on the Candida biology in the context of the availability of the genome sequence, its functional analysis and anti-Candida therapy. Finally, in the light of present trends in Candida research and current challenges, various opportunities are identified and suggestions are made.