Studies on Candida

I. The Isolation of Candida from Human Beings and Its Significance

Abstract

The authors recently experienced a patient with high remittent fever, from the sputum. of whom a Candida strain was isolated and identified as Candida albicans on atcount of its biological properties. Because of a rather frequent appearance of Candida albicans in the sputum of healthy persons, a preliminary investigation was carried out to demonstrate the organism from the sputum of healthy persons, consisting of doctors, nursing persons and bank employees, and from that of patients with chronic pulmonary tuberculosis. The rate of positive isolation was 15.5% with the healthy persons and 21.2% with the tuberculosis patients, and agreed approximately with the results of other investigators. The female showed a higher isolation rate than the male.
A complement fixation test was further introduced into the study of candidasis as a supportive method in the diagnosis. A polysaccharide fraction, extracted from the bacterial body, was used as the antigen, and the reaction was examined with the serum of the patient, suspected of candidasis, and with the sera of healthy persons and patients of other diseases. The reaction of the serum of the suspected patient was positive to a dilution of 40 times. On the contrary, the sera of healthy persons and the patients of other diseases never showed a positive reaction over 5 to 10 times dilution, even if Candida was demonstrated in the sputum.