ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
V. Dillirani1 , R. Menaka1, V. Indumathi1 and P. Balaji2
1Department of Microbiology, Stanley Medical College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
2Stanley Medical College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Article Number: 8185 | © The Author(s). 2023
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2023;17(1):266-272. https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.17.1.16
Received: 21 October 2022 | Accepted: 13 January 2023 | Published online: 03 February 2023
Issue online: March 2023
Abstract

Mucormycosis is an angioinvasive opportunistic fungal infection, but these have become emerging pathogens, especially in conditions with underlying predisposing risk factors in a favourable setting. With the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases, there was an increase in the number of mucormycosis cases among them. The global prevalence rate of mucormycosis in COVID-19 globally varies from 0.005 to 1.7 per million population and in India, it is approximately 0.14 cases/1000. The objective of this study is to detect the prevalence of mucormycosis with the antifungal susceptibility pattern among COVID-19 patients admitted in our hospital. A total of 347 COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 patients with symptoms suggestive of mucormycosis were included in this study. Nasal scrapings, debrided necrotic tissue, unhealthy tissue bits and biopsy tissues taken through FESS were processed for mycological examination under sterile conditions. Among the total 347 samples processed, 87(25%) were positive for fungal culture. Among the culture positves 7.8% (25) belong to mucorales. Among the total 87 fungal isolates, the majority of organism isolated was Aspergillus sp(68%), followed by Rhizopus sp (18%). Rhizopus/Aspergillus sp (5%), Mucor species (5%), Rhizomucor sp (2%), Mucor/Aspergillus sp(1%), Curvularia sp (1%) were the other fungi isolated. All the strains of Mucorales were sensitive to Posaconazole and one strain showed resistance to amphotericin B with MIC 8 µg/ml by microbroth dilution method based on CLSI M27 guidelines for Amphotericin B, and Posaconazole.

Keywords

COVID-19, Mucormycosis, Antifungal susceptibility, Rhizopus sp

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© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.