HEATWAVES are fuelling the rise of a killer fungal infection that’s sweeping the globe, experts have warned.
Scientists claim that emergence of newly-discovered superbug Candida auris, which is resistant to most drugs, could be down to climate change.
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Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Maryland, US, say that the organism has managed to adapt to higher temperatures.
Generally fungi prefer cooler temperatures which is why most infections are found in places such as the feet and nail beds.
Fungus doesn’t tend to cause internal infection because it can’t survive the warmer temperatures inside the body.
But that’s where Candida auris – or C.auris – is different, the experts suggest.
Japanese superbug
The fungus was first discovered in a Japanese patient with an ear infection in 2009.
Since then, the killer infection has swept the globe – killing eight British patients and infecting more than 260 people in 25 hospitals across the UK.
Experts believe cases are underestimated because it’s hard to identify.
It thrives on the skin where it can live for a long period of time and also sticks to and survives well on surfaces.
The germ tends to infect people with weakened or compromised immune systems, so when it’s shed in the likes of hospitals or care homes it can prove fatal.
Worryingly some – generally healthy people – can be carriers of the germ without realising as they have no symptoms and don’t become unwell.
Global warming
The new study, published in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, claims its origins are linked to global warming.
Lead author, Dr Arturo Casadevall, said: “Global warming may lead to new fungal diseases that we don’t even know about right now.”
He said C.auris didn’t spread like other viruses by radiating out from one location but popped up simultaneously in different parts of the world.
Dr Casadevall continued: “What is unusual about Candida auris is that it appeared in three different continents at the same time, and the isolates from India, South Africa, and South America are not related.
“Something happened to allow this organism to bubble up and cause disease.
“We began to look into the possibility that it could be climate change.
“The reasons that fungal infections are so rare in humans is that most of the fungi in the environment cannot grow at the temperatures or our body.”
The signs you could be infected with new killer fungal superbug – that disguises itself as sepsis
Killer super fungus Candida auris, is resistant to drugs has been sweeping the globe and leaving doctors with few treatment options.
The presence of the fungus on the body, called colonisation, doesn’t necessarily cause illness.
But invasive candidiasis – that is, invasive infection with Candida species – can infect the bloodstream (candidemia), central nervous system and internal organs.
When the infection spreads to the bloodstream, it can manifest as sepsis, with symptoms including fever, rapid breathing, muscle pain, and confusion.
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition and claims 40,000 lives in the UK every year.
Just like serious bacterial infections, C. auris may form abscesses in different parts of the body and may require surgery.
Other potential symptoms include pus at a wound, or increases in temperature and feeling generally unwell if a drip line or urinary catheter is infected, PHE warns.
It can be difficult to diagnose fungal infections and accurately identify the species that has caused the infection.
C. auris is very similar to other common fungi of the Candida genus and can be misidentified.
Patients are usually tested for the fungus by a healthcare professional who will take swabs from different parts of the body.
The researchers compared the thermal susceptibility of C. auris to some of its close phylogenetic relatives.
They found that C. auris is capable of growing at higher temperatures than most of its closely related species.
Adaption to higher temperatures is one contributing cause for the emergence of C. auris, say the researchers.
Dr Casadevall said: “What this study suggests is this is the beginning of fungi adapting to higher temperatures, and we are going to have more and more problems as the century goes on.
“Global warming will lead to selection of fungal lineages that are more thermally tolerant, such that they can breach the mammalian thermal restriction zone.”
Dr Casadevall added that if better surveillance systems were in place, the rise of C. auris would have been detected earlier.
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“We need to make investments in better surveillance of fungal diseases,” he said.
“We are pretty good at surveilling influenza and diseases that cause diarrhoea or are contagious, but fungal diseases are not usually contagious and therefore nobody has really bothered to document them well.
“If more fungi were to cross over, you really wouldn’t know until somebody started reporting them in the literature.”
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