الكاتب: Multiple References

Prototheca spp. are achlorophyllous, unicellular algae which are opportunistic pathogens for humans (3, 5, 13, 18) and animals (4, 6, 12, 16). Questions about appropriate therapy for protothecosis still exist. Antialgal agents have not been developed as a class, so other agents must be found. Antifungal agents such as amphotericin B and ketoconazole may work for the treatment of algal infections, because of the obvious similarities between fungi and algae and the modes of action of these two antifungal agents, but little documentation is found in the world literature. Conventional methods for predicting fungal susceptibilities are not reproducible and do not correlate clinically (7-9, 17). Also, there is no evidence that the recommended susceptibility testing methods for fungi will work with algae such as Prototheca spp. Previous investigators have shown that Prototheca spp. are susceptible to gentamicin by using a disk diffusion assay (2, 11), but there have been no reports of therapeutic use of gentamicin for protothecosis. This investigation was undertaken to confirm the patterns of susceptibility of Prototheca spp. to gentamicin and also to devise accurate, reproducible methodologies for predicting protothecal susceptibilities.