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They call it the “black fungus” and in India it is considered “a nightmare in the pandemic” of the coronavirus.
This week, nearly 9,000 cases of mucormicosis, an infection caused by a fungus.
Some patients were only saved by removing one eye. And the mortality rate among those who are infected is 50%.
Thousands of cases have been recorded between the patients from which they recovered covid-19 or that they were in the process of recovering, therefore, it is associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
Doctors assure that there is a relationship with steroids which are used to treat the disease. And diabetics are known to have a higher risk of suffering from mucormycosis.
Here are some keys to understanding what mucomycosis infection is and why it has such devastating effects.
1. What is mucormycosis?
Mucormycosis, commonly known as “black fungus”, is a very rare infection.
It is caused by exposure to hongo mucor, who is part of the family Mucoraceae What It is commonly found in soil, plants, manure, and rotting fruits and vegetables.
“It is ubiquitous and is found in soil and in the air and even in the nose and mucus of healthy people,” Dr Akshay Nair, an eye surgeon from Bombay, India, told the BBC.
Affects sinuses, brain and lungs and can be life threatening people with diabetes or severely immunocompromised, such as cancer patients or people with HIV / AIDS.
2. What causes the infection?
Doctors believe that mucormycosis can be caused by the use of steroids, certain pharmacological compounds used for the treatment of critically ill or critically ill patients due to covid-19.
Steroids reduce inflammation in the lungs and help stop some of the damage that can occur when the body’s immune system is boosted to fight the coronavirus.
But also reduce immunity and increase blood sugar, both in diabetic and non-diabetic patients with covid-19.
Experts believe that this decrease in immunity could trigger cases of mucormycosis.
“Diabetes lowers the body’s immune defenses, the coronavirus exacerbates it, and then the steroids that help fight COVID-19 act like fuel for the fire,” says Nair.
3. What are the symptoms?
Patients suffering from yeast infection often show symptoms of congestion and nasal bleeding.
Also swelling and pain in the eyes, droopy eyelids, blurred vision and finally loss of one eye. There may be black spots on the skin around the nose.
Doctors say most of your patients arrive too late to be treated, when they are already losing their vision. Doctors must surgically remove the affected eye to prevent infection from reaching the brain.
In some cases, patients have lost vision in both eyes. And in rare cases, doctors have to surgically remove the jawbone to prevent the disease from spreading.
It can be treated with an intravenous antifungal injection which should be given every day for up to eight weeks. It is the only effective drug against the disease.
4. Is it contagious?
Mucormycosis it is not contagious between people or animals. It only develops in patients with the right conditions in their body, such as diabetes or immunosuppression caused by other diseases.
However, since spread by fungal spores in the air or in the environment, it is almost impossible to avoid.
A person in good health, or without problems with the immune system, should not fear such contagion.
“Bacteria and fungi are present in our body, but the immune system keeps them under control“, explains K. Bhujang Shetty, director of Narayana Nethralaya Hospital in India.
“When the immune system is weakened due to cancer treatment, diabetes or steroid use, these organisms take advantage and multiply,” Shetty told Reuters.
“The strain appears to be virulent, raising blood sugar levels to very high levels. And strangely, the fungal infection affects many young peopleSays Dr Raghuraj Hegde, from the southern city of Bangalore.
5. How widespread is the contagion in India?
Senior Indian government official VK Paul said “there is no major epidemic” of mucormycosis. However, an increasing number of cases have been reported nationwide, reaching more than 8,800 this week.
“We already see two or three cases a week here. It’s a nightmare in a pandemicSays Dr Renuka Bradoo of Sion Hospital in Bombay.
Dr Baxi has treated around 800 diabetic patients with COVID-19 last year and none of them developed the yeast infection.
Instead, last month her youngest patient was a 27 year old man that he wasn’t even diabetic. “We had to operate on her during her second week of covid-19 and remove her eye. It’s pretty devastating.”
The Indian Council of Medical Research and the Union Ministry of Health have called on the people keep personal hygiene and diseases like diabetes under control.
They have also been urged to wear shoes, long pants, long-sleeved shirts and gloves when handling soil, moss or manure to avoid exposure to the fungus.
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