In vitro culture, ultrastructure, antigenic, and molecular characterization of Encephalitozoon cuniculi isolated from urine and sputum samples from a Spanish patient with AIDS.

In this report we describe the cultivation of two isolates of microsporidia, one from urine and the other from sputum samples from a Spanish AIDS patient. We identified them as Encephalitozoon cuniculi, type strain III (the dog genotype), based on ultrastructure, antigenic characteristics, PCR, and the sequence of the ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region.