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Exophiala dermatitidis Endophthalmitis: Case Report and Literature Review

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Abstract

We report a case of a 59-year-old male patient with a postoperative fungal infection of the left eye. A dark-pigmented yeast, Exophiala dermatitidis (previously known as Wangiella dermatitidis), was identified from the culture of the biopsy taken from the posterior capsule. The infection was successfully eradicated by a combination of surgical and medical (i.e., voriconazole and fluconazole) treatment. This is the first report of successfully treated E. dermatitidis endophthalmitis, which demonstrates that a prompt and aggressive antifungal therapy combined with surgical intervention is necessary to prevent vision loss in cases of endophthalmitis due to Exophiala species. Beside the case description, we also aim to provide a literature review of previously reported eye infections caused by Exophiala species in order to help the future diagnosis and management of the disease.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the “Lendület” Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (LP2016-8/2016) and the Project GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00035 (Széchenyi 2020 Programme). LG is supported by the Postdoctoral Excellence Programme (PD 120808) of the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFI Office). PM would like to thank Deanship of Scientific Research at Majmaah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for supporting this work under Project No. 37/106.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. MTA-SZTE “Lendület” Fungal Pathogenicity Mechanisms Research Group, Közép Fasor 52, Szeged, 6726, Hungary

      Mónika Homa & Tamás Papp

    2. Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science and Informatics, University of Szeged, Közép Fasor 52, Szeged, 6726, Hungary

      Mónika Homa, László Galgóczy, Csaba Vágvölgyi, Tamás Papp & László Kredics

    3. Aravind Eye Hospital and Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, 641 014, India

      Palanisamy Manikandan, Veerappan Saravanan, Rajaraman Revathi, Raghavan Anita & Venkatapathy Narendran

    4. Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Majmaah University, Al Majma’ah, 11952, Saudi Arabia

      Palanisamy Manikandan & Mohammed Al Aidarous

    5. Greenlink Analytical and Research Laboratory India Private Limited, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, 641 014, India

      Palanisamy Manikandan

    6. Research Department of Microbiology, M. R. Government Arts College, Mannargudi, Tiruvarur District, Tamilnadu, 614 001, India

      Kanesan Panneerselvam

    7. Department of Microbiology, PSG College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, 641 014, India

      Coimbatore Subramanian Shobana

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    1. Mónika Homa
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    2. Palanisamy Manikandan
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    Correspondence to Tamás Papp.

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    Mónika Homa and Palanisamy Manikandan have been contributed equally to this work.

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    Homa, M., Manikandan, P., Saravanan, V. et al. Exophiala dermatitidis Endophthalmitis: Case Report and Literature Review. Mycopathologia 183, 603–609 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-017-0235-4

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-017-0235-4

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