Invasive fungal infections pose a growing threat to public health. Each year, these pathogens cause approximately 1.5 million deaths worldwide, as many as tuberculosis and more than malaria, and cases are on the rise worldwide due to multiple factors. One of the main is the result of advances in modern medicine and access to therapies and interventions that damage the immune system, such as chemotherapy or transplants, as this type of infection mainly affects patients in this risk range. Climate change and the coronavirus pandemic are also associated with an increase in incidence.
These conclusions are part of the list prepared by the World Health Organization with the most dangerous infectious fungi for humans, some of which have developed worrying drug resistance. It is the same step taken in 2017 with superbugs, whose multi-resistance to antibiotics has alerted the authorities. Now, estimates put the number of deaths caused by these microorganisms at 1.27 million.
“And it has been seen that the same thing is happening in mushrooms,” says Ana Alastruey-Izquierdo, a researcher at the National Center for Microbiology at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid. “Furthermore, there is the problem with mushrooms that there are not many diagnostic tools and very few antifungal compounds are available. So, if the resistance builds up very quickly, we get into a serious problem and that’s why it was the right time to do it, “adds the 41-year-old from Madrid, who led the technical expert group for the WHO report, a study to which 400 people contributed and for which 6,000 documents were examined. The text highlights the knowledge gap on fungal infections, the lack of diagnostic methods and the low investment for this type of infection, less than 1.5% of all infectious disease research funds.
You can find the report on the mushrooms most worrying for public health in the video that refers to this article.
List of priority infectious fungi
- Critical priority group: Cryptococcus neoformans, Candida auris, Aspergillus fumigatus y candida albicans.
- high priority group, Nakaseomyces glabrata, Histoplasma spp., causative agents of eumycetoma, mucorales, Fusarium spp., Candida tropicalis and Candida parapsilosis.
- Medium priority group: Scedosporium spp., Lomentospora prolificans, Coccidioides spp., Pichia kudriavzeveii (Candida krusei), Cryptococcus catsi, Talaromyces marneffei, Pneumocystis jirovecii y Paracoccidioides spp.
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