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Carolina Firacative, Wieland Meyer, Elizabeth Castaneda

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Cryptococcosis, a potentially fatal mycosis, is caused by members ofÌý theÌýCryptococcus neoformansÌýandÌýCryptococcus gattiiÌýspecies complexes. In Latin America, cryptococcal meningitis is still an important health threat with a significant clinical burden. Analysis of publicly available molecular data from 5686 clinical, environmental, and veterinary cryptococcal isolates from member countries of the Latin American Cryptococcal ¸ßÇ帣ÀûƬ Group showed that, as worldwide,ÌýC. neoformansÌýmolecular type VNI is the most common cause of cryptococcosis (76.01%) in HIV-infected people, followed byÌýC. gattiiÌýmolecular type VGII (12.37%), affecting mostly otherwise healthy hosts. These two molecular types also predominate in the environment (68.60% for VNI and 20.70% for VGII). Among the scarce number of veterinary cases, VGII is the predominant molecular type (73.68%). Multilocus sequence typing analysis showed that, in Latin America, theÌýC. neoformansÌýpopulation is less diverse than theÌýC. gattiiÌýpopulation (DÌýof 0.7104 vs. 0.9755). Analysis of antifungal susceptibility data showed the presence of non-wild-type VNI, VGI, VGII, and VGIII isolates in the region. Overall, the data presented herein summarize the progress that has been made towards the molecular epidemiology of cryptococcal isolates in Latin America, contributing to the characterization of the genetic diversity and antifungal susceptibility of these globally spreading pathogenic yeasts.