• 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

New Type Of Lethal Fungus That Is “Serious Threat” To Public Health Discovered

August 12, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A potentially life-threatening pathogen has just welcomed a new family member, as researchers have identified another distinct group of Candida auris. The discovery brings the number of known clades of the fungus – an emerging multidrug-resistant superbug – to six.

Advertisement

C. auris is a type of yeast that can cause severe illness and is often resistant to antifungal medications. Although healthy people typically don’t get sick, it spreads easily among patients in healthcare facilities and can be dangerous for people with weakened immune systems. The yeast can cause a range of conditions from superficial (skin) infections to more severe, life-threatening illnesses, such as bloodstream infections. Because of its multi-drug resistance, it can be difficult – sometimes impossible – to treat. 

Infections are still relatively rare – however, cases have risen drastically in recent years, and as such the pathogen “poses a serious threat to global public health due to its worldwide distribution, multidrug resistance, high transmissibility, propensity to cause outbreaks, and high mortality,” the authors write.

Previously, five geographically distinct clades – or groups – of the fungus had been described: one in South Asia, another in East Asia, and others in Africa, South America, and Iran.

The latest clade to join the fold was discovered in April 2023, when doctors from the Singapore General Hospital identified a patient carrying an unusual strain of C. auris as part of a routine screening program. Usually, these cases originate from people who have recently traveled, but this patient had not left the country for two years, which rang some alarm bells.

After analyzing the strain’s genetics, the researchers found that it didn’t match any of the five existing clades of the fungus, and so must represent a novel, sixth clade. They then tested strains taken from past patients and found two more isolates of this group of C. auris in Singapore and another in Bangladesh.

Advertisement

It is as yet unclear how widespread the new clade is or whether it has the potential to cause invasive infections and outbreaks. Nonetheless, the researchers write, “it is imperative to ensure its early detection and containment for the purpose of patient safety.”

“The implications of this discovery extend far beyond the laboratory. Now that we have discovered the sixth Candida auris clade, there is a pressing need to improve surveillance capability or develop new methods to augment current surveillance strategies so that health care facilities can keep a close watch on its emergence and contain the spread once found,” Dr Karrie Ko, co-first author of the study, said in a statement.

Fortunately, the cases described in the study were still susceptible to all tested antifungals, which should help abate fears of a Last Of Us-style pandemic – but it’s clear the threat of C. auris isn’t going anywhere, hence more needs to be done to identify new strains, track their transmission, and contain any adverse clinical effects.

The study is published in The Lancet Microbe.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: New Type Of Lethal Fungus That Is “Serious Threat” To Public Health Discovered

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “Silent, Ongoing Genocide”: World’s 196 Uncontacted Tribes Are Facing Grave Threats To Their Survival
  • Golden Tigers Are Among The Rarest Big Cats In The World, But They Spell Bad News For Tigers
  • Rare 2-Million-Year-Old Infant Facial Fossils Expand What We Know About Prehistoric Human Children
  • First-Ever 3D Map Of Planet Outside Solar System Reveals Distant World’s Hot Spot And Cool Ring
  • From Chains To Forests: Working Elephants Set To Be Rehabilitated In The Wild Under New Project
  • Why Does Death Have Such A Distinctive Smell?
  • Blue Dogs Have Been Spotted In Chernobyl: What Is Going On?
  • Record-Breaking Gravitational Wave Detection Suggests These Black Holes Merged Before
  • Hurricane Melissa Is 2025’s Strongest Storm Yet, With Turbulence So Bad It Saw Off The Hurricane Hunters
  • Fancy Seeing Your Organs In 4D? Pretty Soon, You Might Be Able To
  • First Known Bats To Glow In The Dark In The US Discovered – But Scientists Aren’t Sure Why
  • “You Be Good. I Love You”: How Alex The Parrot Rewrote Our Understanding Of Animal Intelligence
  • What Would You Find If You Drill Down Deep Under Antarctica?
  • 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
  • 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