• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Deadly Fungal Contagion Dubbed “Urgent Threat” By CDC Is Becoming More Infectious

March 21, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

A deadly fungus is spreading in the US, according to new research that found the cases of Candida auris rose drastically between 2019 and 2021. Classed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an “urgent threat“, C. auris can cause potentially life-threatening infections that don’t respond well to the current first-line therapy.

A sharp jump in cases like this indicates that the pathogen is seeing increased transmission. CDC researchers were able to identify the trend using national surveillance data on clinical C. auris cases reported to state and local health departments.

Advertisement

It found that clinical cases of the fungal contagion jumped by a whopping 95 percent in 2021 compared to a 2019 increase in cases of just 44 percent. The timing of the spike may be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic (that may have all started with raccoon dogs) as increased pressure on healthcare providers and equipment shortages meant people went without treatment.

The increased transmission is accompanied by an alarming increase in treatment-resistant cases of C. auris infection, finding three times as many in 2021 compared to the previous two years. Echinocandins are typically the first-line therapy for invasive Candida infections like C. auris, but the data shows more and more cases aren’t responding to the treatment.

C. auris was first described in 2009 in Japan, before spreading to South Korea, Asia, Europe, and across the US. The main challenge posed by the yeast variety is that it’s difficult to identify, so can remain undetected in a host for several months.

While there was a 44 to 95 percent jump in cases in a clinical setting, screening efforts also showed dramatic increases indicating there are more people unknowingly walking around with C. auris. Most transmission of C. auris occurs in healthcare settings where you have many long-term residents, some of whom may be dependent on mechanical ventilators.

candida auris fungal infection spread
Candida auris making the shift from an environmental fungus to one that infects hosts may be connected to increasing global temperatures. Image credit: Arturo Casadevall, Dimitrios P. Kontoyiannis, Vincent Robert, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

To add to the concerning data, C. auris was reported to be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change after emerging on three continents. C. auris became one of just a few hundred fungi capable of infecting humans, suggesting it’s overcome one of fungi’s two key weaknesses: the human immune response and body temperature.

As higher global temperatures select for heat-tolerant fungal clades, they may be able to skip into humans by first adapting to infect comparatively cooler avian hosts. The next logical step would be the coldest parts of humans (like the ear, where it was first identified), but with time and evolution who knows where it could spread to next.

A deadly and highly contagious fungal infection echoes The Last Of Us. C. auris might not lead to zombies and clickers, but with infections that range from asymptomatic to fatal illness, it’s easy to see why increased transmission has the CDC concerned.

The study is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. U.S. House panel sets debate on its portion of $3.5 trillion bill
  2. China will maintain prudent monetary policy, says central bank official
  3. France says needs clarifications, explanations from U.S. after submarine deal
  4. Crisis – what crisis? British army deployed to solve fuel crisis

Source Link: Deadly Fungal Contagion Dubbed "Urgent Threat" By CDC Is Becoming More Infectious

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • This Is The Safest Place To Sit In Your Car
  • Birds, Hats, And Boycotts: The Story Behind Why It’s A Crime To Collect Feathers
  • Ultra-High-Definition TV – Is It Really Worth It? New Study Figures Out If We Can Even See In UHD
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Will Be At Its Closest To The Sun This Week
  • Human Movement Around Earth Over 40 Times Greater Than That Of All Wild Land Animals Combined
  • Rats Filmed Snatching Bats Out Of The Air Mid-Flight In First-Of-Its-Kind Footage
  • Incredible Planetary System Has Two Stars And Three Earth-Sized Planets
  • “Invasive” Iguanas Spared Extinction As It’s Discovered They Arrived Before Humans Did
  • C/2025 A6 (Lemmon): Phenomenal Fleeting Photobomb Creates Spiral Over Brightest Comet
  • Why Are Men Taller Than Women? Weirdly, We Don’t Actually Know
  • First Targeted Treatment For Dangerous Liver Disease Could Come From An Unexpected Source
  • Mushrooms Could Beat Metal For Large-Scale Memory Storage And Processing
  • Greenhouse Gases’ Heat Trapping Ability Hasn’t Saturated As Some Predicted – But Why?
  • Did You Know The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Underwater?
  • Video Game Study Found Out What People Do When The World Ends, And It’s Exactly What You’d Expect
  • How Do We Predict The Weather? Find Out More In Issue 40 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • You Should Never Leave These Foods In Your Fridge Door (But We Bet You Do)
  • These Gullies On Mars Look Carved – We Might Finally Know What Created Them
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction, And Much More This Week
  • Spaghetti Has Inner Secrets We’re Only Just Learning About
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version