This work aimed to study the effect of some probiotic microorganisms on fungi causing tinea pedis disease. Total of 50 scraped samples were collected patients (18 to 66 years old of both sexes) suffering from Tinea pedis, during the period of November/2005 to March/2006 from the Medicale City and College of physical Education in Baghdad governorate. After subjecting samples to cultural, microscopic and biochemical tests, the following causative fungi were identified; Trichophyton rubrum 8(16%), Trichophyton mentagrophyte 5(10%) and 7(14%) of isolates were belong to Candida albicans. Other identified species of Candida were: - Candida tropicals, Candida krusi and Candida parapsiolosis. Minimum inhibitory concentration of ketazole against Candida albicans, Trichophyton rubrum and Trichophyton mentagrophyte were (64, 128, 1024) µg/ml, respectively.
Upon such results, one isolate of Candida albicans (C1) was chosen due to its ability to form high number of germ tube among others isolates. On the other hand, two isolates of lactic acid bacteria (LAB): Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus plantarum were used as probiotics to investigate their inhibitory effect in liquid and on solid media against fungi causing tinea pedis. It was found that unconcentrated filtrates of LAB isolates exhibited no inhibitory effects against any of the three pathogenic fungal isolates for all incubation periods, while the one-fold concentrated filtrate exhibited a slight effect. But upon concentrating the filtrates to (two-fold, three-fold and four-fold), remarkable inhibitory effects, especially the four-fold, were recorded against all tested fungi.
Regarding minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) experiment, several ratios were prepared by reconstituting the four-fold concentrated filtrate with
the SDB (0:10, 1:9, 2:8, 3:7, 4:6, 5:5, 6:4, 7:3, 8:2, 9:1). Results showed that the MICs of Lactobacillus acidophilus were (4:6, 4:6, 6:4) for (Candida albicans, Trichophyton rubrum and Trichophyton mentagrophyte) and those of Lactobacillus plantarum were (4:6, 3:7 and 6:4) for (Candida albicans, Trichophyton rubrum and Trichophyton mentagrophyte), respectively.