Characteristics and prognostic risk factors of patients with sequence type 5 lineage-associated cryptococcosis in China

Objectives: Cryptococcus neoformans sequence type 5 (ST5) lineage could infect immunocompetent hosts and cause a significant medical burden. We sought to identify characteristics and prognostic risk factors of ST5 lineage-associated cryptococcosis.Methods: Multilocus sequence typing and antifungal susceptibility testing were conducted for Cryptococ-cus isolates. The clinical and laboratory characteristics of cryptococcosis patients were investigated. The multivariable logistic regression identified variables independently associated with 30-day mortality in patients with ST5 lineage-associated cryptococcosis without HIV.Results: The infection rate of the ST5 isolates was 89.4% (370/414) in China. The proportion of ST5 isolates with nonwild-type minimum inhibitory concentrations to amphotericin B, 5-flucytosine, voriconazole, posaconazole, itraconazole, and fluconazole were 0%, 5.4%, 0.3%, 1.4%, 0.3%, and 8.1%, respectively. The ST5 lineage-infected group exhibited significantly higher blood platelet count, lower blood cryptococcal antigen (CrAg) titer, lower cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) CrAg titer than the non-ST5 lineage-infected group, and lower hemoglobin and lower CSF CrAg titer than the Cryptococcus gattii isolates-infected group. Seven baseline parameters, including underlying disease, dyskinesia, anemia, high peripheral blood neutrophils, low platelet count, high CSF fungal burden, and high CSF opening pressure, were associated indepen-dently with the 30-day mortality of patients with ST5 lineage-associated cryptococcosis without HIV.Conclusion: Our study has provided an understanding of the ST5 lineage associated with cryptococcosis.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )