Renaming Candida glabrata—A case of taxonomic purity over clinical and public health pragmatism

In recent years, many medical mycologists have adopted the proposed name change of Candida glabrata to Nakaseomyces glabrata and some to Nakaseomyces glabratus.Is this helpful or a hindrance?I argue it is unhelpful. Is Candida glabrata an important pathogen?Candida glabrata is the third or fourth most common human pathogen among Candida spp.[1].It is a haploid yeast.It causes candidaemia, invasive candidiasis and candiduria in adults, and rarely in children.The most recent estimate of the annual incidence of all candidaemia and invasive candidiasis is approximately 1.5 million [2], of which C. glabrata is probably responsible for about 25%.It is the second most common cause of vulvovaginal candidiasis and is especially prominent in recurrent cases (RVVC).Globally an estimated 135 million women are affected by RVVC [3], so about 13 million are likely infected with C. glabrata.Its colonial morphology is small and unlike most other pathogenic, Candida spp. it does not usually produce pseudohyphae or true hyphae.It grows well in anaerobic blood culture media, but more slowly than C. albicans or C. tropicalis and forms biofilms.It is often resistant to fluconazole, depending on where the breakpoint is set.A simple search of PubMed with "Candida glabrata" yields 7,000 references. How did Candida glabrata get its name?In the early days of molecular biology and fungal taxonomy in 1977 Frank Odds, Michael Rinaldi, Chester Cooper, Annette Fothergill, Lester Pasarell, and Michael McGinnis recognised that Torulopsis glabrata was better retained in the Candida genus, even though its taxonomy placed it among the Saccharomyces species [4].As a "new kid on the mycology block" I remember asking Frank about this and he argued that it was better for clinical practice that glabrata was grouped within the Candida spp.The following year, David Yarrow and Sally Meyer proposed abandoning the genus Torulopsis and renaming multiple species as Candida species, including C. glabrata [5].