P102 Nuclear magnetic resonance -based identification of metabolites in dermatophytes

POSTER SESSION 1, SEPTEMBER 21, 2022, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM: OBJECTIVES: Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy provides a holistic snapshot of the metabolome of an organism. There is a dearth of studies till date that had exploited NMR metabolomic platform to study dermatophytes, despite its potential for rapid identification and subsequent application of the knowledge in performing faster antifungal susceptibility of dermatophytes. Here we attempted to study the frequency of various species of dermatophytes in clinically suspected cases of dermatophytosis and perform NMR-based identification of metabolites in the culture suspensions/cell extracts of T. mentagrophyte and T. rubrum. METHODS: This was a hospital-based prospective study conducted in the isolates obtained from clinically suspected cases of Dermatophytosis in the patients. Skin, nails, and hair samples of patients suspected with superficial fungal infections were processed for dermatophytes using conventional microbiological methods. NMR-based identification of metabolites was carried out in cell extracts prepared from the culture suspensions of T. mentagrophytes and T. rubrum obtained during the study from a subset of the clinical isolates from the samples. RESULTS: Dermatophytes were isolated in 85.88% (219/255) cases, with T. mentagrophyte being isolated in 65% (143/219) of isolates, followed by T. rubrum in 31.5% (69/219) isolates. In NMR study was done in the standard ATCC strains (T. mentagrophyte ATCC9533 and T. rubrum ATCC28188) and representative clinical isolates of both the species. Overall, 24 metabolites were identified in T. rubrum and 23 metabolites in T. mentagrophyte amongst which 22 metabolites were common to both fungus, however, ‘4-hydroxyproline’ and ‘acetate’ was found specific to T. rubrum, and ‘allantoin’ was found specific to T. mentagrophyte. CONCLUSION: T. mentagrophyte was the predmominant dermatophyte species in the study. Amongst the number of metabolites detected in T. rubrum and T. mentagrophyte, ‘4-hydroxyproline’ and ‘acetate’ was found specific to T. rubrum, and ‘allantoin’ was found specific to T. mentagrophyte. These specific metabolites could be useful for as early identification of these dermatophytes as well early determination of antifungal susceptibility by using metabolic endpoints, further large-scale study will be helpful in this regard.