General Obstetrics and Gynecology: GynecologyPrevalence of vulvovaginal candidiasis and susceptibility to fluconazole in women☆
Section snippets
Patient population
This study was conducted at the Ghent University Hospital over a period of 14 weeks. A total of 612 consecutive patients who visited the outpatient clinic of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, with or without complaints of vaginitis, consented to participate. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Ghent University Hospital.
Each patient completed a standardized questionnaire about age, use of contraceptives, estrogen content of oral contraceptives (0.02-0.05 mg of
Results
From a total of 612 consecutive patients, yeasts were recovered from 123 vaginal swabs (20.1%). Patients were divided in 3 groups: a group of patients who were only colonized (without symptoms), a group with clinical symptoms of candidiasis and a positive KOH examination results, and a group with symptoms but with negative KOH examination results. Sixty-five patients were symptomatic, from which 60% (39/65 patients) had a positive KOH examination result and 40% (26/65 patients) had a negative
Comment
Yeasts were detected in 20.1% of the vaginal swabs from both symptomatic (64.6%; 42/65 women) and asymptomatic patients (11.2%; 81/547 women) with the use of a new fluorogenic procedure.4 Reported prevalences in other studies ranged from 19% to 82% in symptomatic women and from 4% to 40% in asymptomatic women.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 In the present study, C albicans (68.3%) was predominant, followed by C glabrata (16.3%) and C parapsilosis (8.9%). The rather low prevalence of C albicans and the
Acknowledgements
We thank M. De Block from the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for the coordination of the collecting of samples from patients; J. Wydooghe and N. Verbeerst for technical assistance; and and Dr J.L. Rodriguez-Tudela and Dr M. Cuenca-Estrella, the National Center of Microbiology, Madrid, Spain, for retesting the isolates by EUCAST and for their critical comments in connection with the revision of our manuscript.
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Reprint requests: H.J. Nelis, PhD, Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology, Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Harelbekestraat 72, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium; e-mail: [email protected]