In our study, M. restricta was recovered from individuals having any type of hair (oily and dry). Severe hair loss was associated more with M. restricta and M. globosa than other Malassezia species, but the difference was not significant. This finding was in agreement with the study of Nematian et al24 where increased hair loss was shown to be associated with Pityrosporum ovale (M. globosa). Malassezia may cause hair loss by utilizing the lipids present in different strata of epidermis and dermis leading to weakening of hair root and hair fall25,26.
The major difficulty while conducting epidemiological studies on Malassezia associated disease is its isolation due to slow growing nature of this agent. A few species like M. globosa, M. restricta and M. obtusa take longer than a month to grow in sufficient amount to extract the DNA by phenol-chloroform extraction technique. In the present study, we used the rapid method of template preparation from the Malassezia colonies using microwave irradiation12. This technique is rapid, reliable, cost-effective, and simple. This technique could also be applied to amplify the DNA from a single isolated colony during the co-existence of multiple Malassezia species in a given culture.