Introduction
Candida africana was originally isolated from patients in Africa
and Germany in 1993 as atypical Candida albicans strains [1].
Later, Tietz et al. [2] proposed it as a new species. Since
2001, the new species was reported in several countries in the Middle
East [3-5], Europe [6-9], East Asia [10-14], South America
[10,15,16], Africa [17-19], and North America [20, 21]. In
addition, C. africana was primarily isolated from the genital
specimens but rarely from the skin [2], from blood cultures (in
Chile [10]), and from systemic infection with renal involvement in
preterm newborn babies (in the United States [21]). In Turkey,
re-examining 195 vaginal C. albicans strains using hyphal wall
protein 1 (HWP1) gene polymorphism proved that none of them wereCandida dubliniensis or C. africana [22]. Similarly,
in Malaysia, 98 C. albicans isolates were recovered from the
vagina, but none of them were found to be C. africana [23].
Candida albicans possesses a highly dynamic genome that is
subjected to a wide range of changing, resulting in the evolution of new
variants or strains. As an example of such evolution, C. albicansshaped the emergence of C. africana as a new species that is
characterised by lower virulence and the inability to produce
chlamydospores. Extensive molecular analysis of a panel of C.
albicans that were recovered from vaginal swabs revealed several
characteristics that distinguished those re-examined strains from theC. albicans, such as lacking N‑acetylglucosamine assimilation due
to a typical polymorphism in HXK1, which compromised the utilisation of
this amino acid. In addition, multi-locus sequencing analysis showed
significant differences between those strains and C. albicans and
demonstrated a high probability of variation, which suggests that this
is an adequate type to study evolution. As a result, Chowdhary et al.
[24] and Giosa et al. [25] positioned them in a separate species
called C. africana .
The Candida species were extensively studied in Iraq, focusing on
the clinically related ones, which were isolated from different parts of
the human body [26-36]. Despite that, this work is considered the
first record of this species in Iraq from the oral cavities of leukaemia
patients.