Cutaneous granulomas in dolphins caused by novel uncultivated Paracoccidioides brasiliensis

• Autor(a) principal: Raquel Virgínia Rocha Vilela
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Gregory Dana Bossart, Judy A. St. Leger, Leslie M. Dalton, John S. Reif, Adam M. Schaefer, Peter J. McCarthy, Patricia A. Fair, Leonel Mendoza
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2212.160860; http://hdl.handle.net/1843/40188
• topic: Paracoccidioides; Paracoccidioidomicose; Granuloma; Fungos; Golfinhos

Cutaneous granulomas in dolphins were believed to be caused by Lacazia loboi, which also causes a similar disease in humans. This hypothesis was recently challenged by reports that fungal DNA sequences from dolphins grouped this pathogen with Paracoccidioides brasiliensis. We conducted phylogenetic analysis of fungi from 6 bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) with cutaneous granulomas and chains of yeast cells in infected tissues. Kex gene sequences of P. brasiliensis from dolphins showed 100% homology with sequences from cultivated P. brasiliensis, 73% with those of L. loboi, and 93% with those of P. lutzii. Parsimony analysis placed DNA sequences from dolphins within a cluster with human P. brasiliensis strains. This cluster was the sister taxon to P. lutzii and L. loboi. Our molecular data support previous findings and suggest that a novel uncultivated strain of P. brasiliensis restricted to cutaneous lesions in dolphins is probably the cause of lacaziosis/lobomycosis, herein referred to as paracoccidioidomycosis ceti.