PATHOGENESIS OF CANDIDA ALBICANS INFECTION FOLLOWING ANTIBIOTIC THERAPY III

Abstract

Antibiotics were fed to 2 separate strains of albino mice by means of a stomach tube. The mice were inoculated orally with C. albicans and after predetermined intervals stool specimens were cultured for the organism. It was shown that all the antibiotics favor the establishment of an intestinal population of C. albicans in mice regardless of whether or not these antibiotics show any evidence of stimulating the growth of this fungus in vitro. There probably is no characteristic peculiar to any single antibiotic which would enable it to favor this overgrowth with C. albicans since there is no statistically significant difference between any of these chemotherapeutic agents in the incidence of this phenomenon with the one exception of the chlortetracycline-plus-parabens preparation[long dash]in which the presence of the antifungal agents probably is responsible for the difference. The 2 pure breeds of white mice used in these experiments reacted with a statistically significant degree of difference.