Malassezia spp. in rabbit: an unsolved mystery

The recovery of Malassezia from rodents and lagomorphs has been rarely reported in literature. In 2011, Cabañes et al. (Medical Mycology, 49: 40–48) described, the skin of two rabbit from Spain, a novel yeast species, Malassezia cunicoli, able to grow only on Leeming & Notman agar (LNA). In a later research Galuppi et al. (2014, XXVIII Congresso Nazionale SoIPa, p.384), at microscopic examination of swabs from ear canals of 168 rabbits, observed the presence of yeasts M. cunicoli – like in 58.3% subject. Since all the samples showed no growth on LNA agar, it was hypothesize, the strains observed had different nutritional requirement. In the present study, isolation test from ear swabs canal of 23 rabbit microscopically positive for Malassezia-like yeasts, failed both on LNA and on 18 different modified medium. DNA extraction, PCR amplifying a 300 bp fragment of 18s rDNA (Tampieri et al., 2004, Parassitologia, 46,205 ) and sequencing were carried out from 8 swabs. The sequences showed 95% identity with M. cunicoli (GU733708) and 99,9% identity with Malassezia Phylotype 131 (AB663497) described by Zhang et al. (2012) from human ear canal and foot sole skin. The latter was not able to grow on LNA medium similarly to our strains. Further research are needed to clarify if the strains present in rabbit in our country were different to the ones described by Cabanes et al (2011 l.c.) and would be considered another specie or simply a strains with different nutritional requirement. The results obtained in our research showed that there is still a lot to discover about the genus Malassezia as component of the skin microbiota.