Yvonne Dube

Degrees

Current Research Activities

Medical and Health Sciences incl Neurosciences

Candidiasis due to multi-drug resistant Candida species continues to be life-threatening and difficult to eradicate resulting in clinical failure. Moreover, existing antifungal drugs are toxic, inefficient and their misappropriation develops drug resistance. Probiotic strains as whole cells have been used in the treatment of candidiasis, which leads to high risk of probiotic sepsis. Thus new and safer methods for combating fungal infections are of high medical priority. One strategy is to target the virulence traits and inhibit the drug efflux pumps using probiotic cell free extracts (CFEs). Therefore, in this study, the antifungal effects of probiotic CFEs from three probiotic strains will be assessed against fluconazole susceptible and resistant Candida albicans. Cell-free extracts will be prepared from Lactobacillus acidophilus V, Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium animalis subspecies lactis and screened against fluconazole susceptible and resistant isolates of C. albicans using the antimicrobial assay.

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