Healthsciencealert.comThis Dangerous Fungus Has Become Resistant to Every Major Antifungal Drug We Have… Twice
A fungal infection found in a Kenyan hospital patient has resisted every single antifungal drug available, only the second case like this ever recorded globally.
There's a new fungus amongus, and it's raising red flags among health care experts because it resists all the major antifungal treatments. The discovery involves Candidozyma auris (formerly known as Candida auris), an emerging fungal pathogen that has already become a serious problem in hospitals around the world. Since it was first described in 2009, this fungus has spread to more than 60 countries across six continents, causing healthcare-associated outbreaks and invasive infections, with mortality rates of 30–50 percent reported in some situations.
Researchers have identified a strain of Candidozyma auris that is resistant to all four major classes of antifungal drugs, recovered from a patient in Nairobi.
It is only the second pan-drug-resistant case ever documented globally, with the first reported in New York in 2022, and the first ever found in Africa.
The WHO already lists this fungus as a critical-priority pathogen, and scientists say its genetic mutations give clues about how such resistance develops.
Experts say this fungus spreads easily in hospitals and has a mortality rate of 30 to 50 per cent in some cases, so ask your doctor about infection risks before any planned hospital procedure.
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