As a drug-resistant fungal disease, Candida auris, adapts to the warmer climate, cases of it rise; up 214% in Kentucky in 2022
All of Kentucky’s 29 clinical cases of C. auris were reported in 2021 and 2022. However, there was a 214% increase between the years, with seven in 2021 and 22 in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fungal disease expert Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist, immunologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Fassett that humans normally have tremendous protection against fungal infections because of our temperature.
“However, if the world is getting warmer and the fungi begin to adapt to higher temperatures as well, some … are going to reach what I call the ‘temperature barrier’,” he said, referring to the threshold at which mammals’ warm bodies usually protect them from infection.
In other words, Fassett writes, “Over time, humans may lose resistance to these climate-adapting fungi and become more vulnerable to infections. Some researchers think this is what is happening with C. auris.”
The pathogen was first identified 14 years ago in Japan and early on most cases in the U.S. were linked to people who had traveled from other places, Meghan Marie Lyman, an epidemiologist for mycotic diseases at the CDC, told Fassett. Now, she said, most cases are acquired locally, generally spreading among patients in health-care settings.
“In the U.S., there were 2,377 confirmed clinical cases diagnosed last year,” Fassett reports. She adds, “In the U.S., the most cases last year were found in Nevada and California, but the fungus was identified clinically in patients in 29 states. New York remains a major hot hotspot.”
“It’s a potentially multidrug-resistant pathogen with the ability to spread very efficiently in health care settings,” he said. “We’ve never had a pathogen like this in the fungal-infection area.”