Assessment of caspofungin susceptibility of Candida glabrata by the Etest®, CLSI, and EUCAST methods, and detection of FKS1 and FKS2 mutations

Candida glabrata has emerged as a major pathogen in invasive candidiasis in recent years. Currently, guidelines for invasive candidiasis treatment recommend fluconazole or an echinocandin as the first-line therapy. Nevertheless, the resistance of Candida glabrata to echinocandin is an emerging problem and has been partly associated with mutations in the FKS1 and FKS2 genes. The Etest® is an appropriate method for determining antifungal susceptibility in emergency routine diagnosis. In this work, we evaluated the reliability of the Etest® in comparison with the two reference broth microdilution methods, Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST), to assess the caspofungin resistance of 193 isolates of Candida glabrata. The interpretation of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values was also discussed according to different breakpoints. Moreover, FKS1 and FKS2 mutations were investigated for isolates with high MICs. Our results showed that the MIC50 value was similar to the MIC90 value for each method. The Etest® method showed the lowest MIC values, whereas EUCAST presented the highest. Categorical agreement between the Etest® and CLSI methods was 100 % and 36 % using the breakpoints proposed by Arendrup et al. (Antimicrob Agents Chemother 56(7):3965–3968, 2012) and Pfaller et al. (Int J Antimicrob Agents 38(1):65–69, 2011), respectively. Two isolates showed high MIC values with the three methods and both presented FKS2 mutations. A novel FKS2 mutation was also reported for one isolate. Future epidemiological studies should also evaluate the reliability of the Etest® to detect echinocandin resistance, as it remains a routine method.