Detection of Candida spp. in Children with Diarrhea in Kirkuk Province

The study aims at evaluating the relation of Candida spp. with diarrhea in children. A cross sectional study was carried out in Kirkuk city from 15th of January 2017 to 15th of June 2017. The number of patients under study were 120 children between 1 day to 12 years old. These patients admitted to Pediatric Hospital of Kirkuk. The control group who were matched to the patients studied, included 60 apparently healthy children and their ages were between 1 day to 12 years old. The study showed that the highest rate of Candida spp. was found in children with diarrhea comparing with the control (93.33% vs. 11.6%) with highly significant relation. In view of mixed infection of Candida spp., Table 2 shows that the highest rate of Candida spp. was C. albicans (26.57%) followed by 21.43% as C. tropicalis and the lowest rate was C. kafyr (6.25%) while the mixed infection by the four types recorded 30.36%. The highest rate of mixed Candida spp. infection with found in children who were infected with C. albicans with C. tropicalis (23.53%), followed by 17.65% with C. albicans and C. kyrosi (Table 3). Table 4 shows that the highest rates of Candida spp. found in patients who belonged to the age group 1-> 6 years (49.11%) while the lowest rates of Candida spp. infections occurred in age group 6-12 years. Candida spp. infection occurred more frequently in patients from rural areas than those from urban areas. It was concluded that Candida spp. was a highly related with diarrhea in children and Candida albicans was the most isolated species.