Candida colonisation was found in 4.6% of neonates and the only Candida species isolated was C. albicans. The rectal mucosa was significantly more colonised than oral mucosa. It is known that Candida colonises the gastrointestinal tract of 4.8–10% neonates and that C. albicans is the predominant species,[13] but not much is known about the process of the oral and rectal colonisation.[11, 16-18] Oral colonisation seems

to increased from birth up to the 18th month of age and then decreased.[11] Rectal colonisation seems to be more frequent.[16, 17] Our findings, derived from see more swabbing very early in life, do not confirm the hypothesis that the earliest site colonised is the oral cavity.[18] These FK506 price differences may be attributed to different study design and setting as well as to the age of sampling. In this study, neonates were only colonised by C. albicans, which is observed mainly in vertical transmission, whereas C. parapsilosis has been observed in horizontal

transmission in the neonatal intensive care unit setting.[19] It is of great interest that all non-colonised mothers gave birth to non-colonised neonates, that all colonised neonates were born from colonised mothers and furthermore that C. albicans was the only species isolated from 16 mother–infant pairs. The molecular typing study showed that in all colonised neonates the pulsotype of C. albicans was identical to the pulsotype of their mothers. According to PFGE-BssHII typing method, the 16 maternal C. albicans isolates were different. Electrophoretic karyotyping of the maternal C. albicans isolates displayed seven isolates with identical bands suggesting clonal relatedness. However, this method has a less discriminatory power than PFGE-BssHII.[9] These findings suggest that colonised neonates may acquire C. albicans via vertical transmission. These C. albicans colonised neonates met criteria for vertical transmission according to the research of Bliss et al. [4] had been born by C. albicans colonised mother, developed C. albicans colonisation next by 1 week of age and had C. albicans isolate identical to the maternal isolate. All colonised neonates

were full term and healthy, except for one of vaginal delivery with oral colonisation, who was admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit because of respiratory distress. It is interesting that neonatal Candida colonisation is mostly investigated among preterm neonates in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, where horizontal transmission may be more possible; Bliss et al. [4] demonstrated that 41% of C. albicans colonising very low-birthweight infants was due to vertical transmission; Waggoner-Fountain et al. [5] demonstrated that 14% of mother–preterm infant pairs were colonised with the identical strain of C. albicans. According to Caramalac et al. [11] vaginal mucosa was not the main route of Candida transmission to full-term neonates.