Screening of strains of the Candida parapsilosis group of the BCCM/IHEM collection by MALDI-TOF MS

One hundred sixty-three strains stored as Candida parapsilosis in the BCCM/IHEM collection were reidentified based on internal transcribed spacer sequencing: 92% were identified as true C. parapsilosis, while 4.3% and 3% belonged to the closely related species C. metapsilosis and C. orthopsilosis, respectively, providing important epidemiologic information. Furthermore, we showed that matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a fast method that can discriminate between these species.