PERFORMANCE OF YEAST IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS - AN ANALYSIS OF THE COLLEGE-OF-AMERICAN-PATHOLOGISTS SPECIAL MYCOLOGY SURVEY DATA

Abstract

The performance of .apprx. 400 participants in the Collage of American Pathologists Special Mycology Survey in identifying 15 medically important yeasts was analyzed. With 9 strains, users of the API 20C and Uni-Yeast-Tek (UYT) systems performed comparably. With 2 strains (Trichosporon cutaneum and Candida guilliermondii) the UYT users performed significantly better than API users; with 4 strains (Cryptococcus albidus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and 2 strains of C. tropicalis), API users significantly outperformed UYT users. Analysis of biochemical reaction patterns demonstrated, with a few exceptions, good reproducibility among laboratories with both kits. With 1 exception (melezitose-variable C. albicans), the few discrepancies in biochemical reactions had little or no influence on the final identification. From this analysis, it is concluded that both API and UYT perform acceptably well in routine clinical laboratories when used in conjunction with morphologic observations and, when indicated, supplemented biochemical tests.