Recovery of Cryptococcus neoformans from the nasopharynx of AIDS patients.

Nasopharyngeal swabbings, obtained from AIDS patients, were plated onto Niger seed agar containing antibiotics Cryptococcus neoformans was isolated from 35 out of 84 patients (41.7%) diagnosed as primary cryptococcal cases before antifungal administration, and 8 out of 86 (9.3%) cryptococcosis patients on antifungal therapy. The fungus could not be isolated from any of 447 samples from 194 AIDS patients not diagnosed with cryptococcosis. These findings are novel in that the presence of C. neoformans in AIDS patients at this site has never been looked at previously.