Focus on fungus

Not long ago, “superbugs”—drug-resistant bacteria—were all the news. Now its fungi. A new one, called Candida auris, has been identified. It’s particularly dangerous because it can kill people whose immune systems are compromised (they die from blood stream infections). Most alarming is the fact that it’s resistant to major antifungal medications and is extremely hard to eradicate. In one hospital where it had taken hold, one doctor reported that “everything tested positive:” the walls, bed, doors, curtains, poles, mattress bed rails, and on and on.

Apparently, C. auris is sweeping the world: Venezuela, Spain, England, India, Pakistan, South Africa and now New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. The CDC calls it an “urgent threat.” Yet the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. Local governments and hospitals are keeping quiet. They don’t want to scare people away. No one knows where the fungus originated. They also don't know how it developed drug resistance, although some theorize it's the overuse of agricultural fungicides. (With bacteria, it’s the overuse of antibiotics.)

By the way, fungi, like bacteria, are a normal part of our bodies’ ecosystems—our microbiota. They live in everyone's guts and on everyone's skin. On your skin, a fungus sometimes shows up as a red patch. Nothing to worry about. Our guts are populated by hundreds of thousands of fungi. Sometimes the balance of the various bacterial and fungal populations gets out of whack and cause disease. At the moment, for example, scientists are trying to determine whether there’s a link between an intestinal fungus called Malassezia and Crohn’s disease (Malassezia is also responsible for dandruff).

I know. Just one more thing to worry about. But I'm not.

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