Abstract
Candida species are considered to be an opportunistic pathogen that leaves asymptomatically in warm blooded animals like human, birds etc. It can cause serious and lethal disease in healthy individuals. It generally causes infection of skin, oral cavity esophagus, gastrointestinal tract, vagina and vascular system of humans. It is a common cause of nosocomial infection in hospitals and most of the Candida infections occur in patients who are immunocompromised. Virulence factor like adhesion, morphogenesis, phospholipase are responsible for pathogenesis. Genus Candida include about 200 species but normally C. albicans, C. glabrata, C. tropicalis, C. parapsilosis, and C. krusei are five species of Candida involved in 90% of invasive infections. Candida infections can be superficial or invasive. Superficial infections often affect the skin or mucous membrane and can be treated successfully with antifungal drugs whereas invasive fungal infections are often life-threatening. Different chemical drugs such as azoles, polyenes, echinocandins and nucleoside analogues are in use to treat the infection caused by C. albicans, but due to their regular use, C. albicans can show resistance to these drugs and mortality rate increases. Resistance to various drugs is due to multiple factors, viz., reduced accumulations of drug in the cells, decreased target affinity and counteraction of the drug effect. Biofilms production is the another major cause of resistance to different drug groups and to overcome this emergence, different strategies are improvise which include the new triazoles, peptides, use of natural compounds, vaccinations, antibodies, cytokines therapy, and low level laser therapy.