Journal of Advances in Medicine

We studied the occurrence of dermatophytes and non-dermatophytes fungi from diabetic patients. In addition, we compared the newly developed dermatophyte identification medium (DIM) that has little cost with the established dermatophyte test medium (DTM).

The study was conducted on seventy one clinical samples from diabetic patients complaining of onychomycosis and foot mycosis. In addition to sixty six different fungi species used as positive internal control recovered in our laboratory. Samples were subjected to full mycological examinations.

Using mycological diagnostic methods the commonest fungal isolates from onychomycosis were Candida species and Aspergillus (22.5% for each). For foot mycosis the commonest fungal isolates was T. mentagrophytes (7.5%). Comparable results were obtained for laboratory control fungal isolates and for clinical samples on DIM and DTM. The cost of one test with use of DTM was five dollars while for DIM it was tow dollars.

This study highlights the importance of non dermatophytes fungi as a causative fungal pathogen in onychomycosis and foot mycosis infections in diabetic patients. This finding highlights the importance of non dermatophytes as etiological pathogens rather than coincidence flora. The results of our study also clearly indicate that the use of new DIM is an inexpensive, rapid, and accurate means of presumptively identifying both dermatophytes and non dermatophytes fungi recovered from clinical specimens compared to DTM.