Open AccessA simplified technique for evaluating the adherence of yeasts to human vaginal epithelial cells
Author(s) -
Taguti Irie Mary Mayumi,
Lopes Consolaro Márcia Edilaine,
Aparecida Guedes Terezinha,
Donatti Lucélia,
Valéria Patussi Eliana,
Estivalet Svidzinski Terezinha Inez
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of clinical laboratory analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.536
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1098-2825
pISSN - 0887-8013
DOI - 10.1002/jcla.20132
Subject(s) - vagina , microbiology and biotechnology , yeast , candida albicans , adhesion , candida glabrata , corpus albicans , candida tropicalis , candida parapsilosis , chemistry , biology , medicine , anatomy , biochemistry , organic chemistry
Thousands of women all over the world annually suffer of vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), an infection caused by yeasts, which mainly affect the mucosa of the vulva and vagina. The adherence of the yeasts to the mucosae is an essential step for colonization and predisposes the start of the infectious process. In this study, a technique capable of evaluating the adhesion of yeasts to human vaginal epithelial cells (HVEC) was employed. Twenty‐five vaginal yeast isolates (10 Candida albicans , nine C. glabrata , two C. parapsilosis , one C. tropicalis , two Saccharomyces cerevisiae , and one Trichosporon sp.) were evaluated. A suspension of each yeast was co‐incubated with HVEC obtained from a healthy donor in the ovulatory phase. After 1 hr, smears were made, stained with crystal violet and Papanicolaou, and the number of yeasts that adhered to 600 HVEC was evaluated. The adhesion of C. albicans was significantly greater than that of the other species and occurred mainly in the intermediate HVEC, rather than the superficial. In addition, the proposed technique, easy to execute and of low cost showed to be reproducible and enables the determination of the adherence capacity of different isolates, whose adhesion was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy. J. Clin. Lab. Anal. 20:195–203, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.