학술논문
Detection of Pneumocystis jirovecii dihydropteroate synthase polymorphisms in patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia.
Document Type
Article
Author
Source
Subject
*PNEUMOCYSTIS pneumonia
*GENETIC mutation
*HIV-positive persons
*AIDS-related opportunistic infections
*APICOMPLEXA
*GENETIC polymorphisms
*GENE amplification
*POLYMERASE chain reaction
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Language
ISSN
0036-5548
Abstract
In the present study, in order to improve the detection of Pneumocystis jirovecii dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) mutations in pulmonary specimens of HIV-infected patients with P. jirovecii pneumonia, we evaluated a microfiltration procedure for the removal of human cell contamination and a nested-PCR method, for amplification in specimens with low parasite load. In the studied population, PCR amplification of the DHPS gene was more successful in unfiltered than in filtered specimens, with both touchdown-PCR and nested-PCR procedures ( p Amplification of P. jirovecii DHPS gene with nested-PCR was achieved in 77.5% of the specimens studied, demonstrating that this is a useful method for the identification of mutations in pulmonary specimens, including samples with low parasite loads, and will facilitate the evaluation of the relationship between the P. jirovecii DHPS polymorphisms and clinical resistance to sulfa drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]