The “super fungus” Candida auris continues to spread in the United States and two epidemics are underway

U.S. health officials said today they now have evidence of an incurable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home.

Outbreaks of “super fungi” have been reported at a Washington, DC nursing home and two Dallas area hospitals, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A handful of patients had invasive fungal infections that were immune to the three main classes of drugs.

“This is really the first time we’ve started seeing resistance groups.” in which the patients appeared to contract infections from each other, ”said Dr. Meghan Lyman of the CDC.

The mushroomCandida auris is a form considered dangerous for hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart, or brain. Outbreaks in health centers have been caused when the fungus spreads through contact with the patient or on contaminated surfaces.

Health officials have sounded the alarm bells for years about the superbug after seeing infections in which commonly used drugs had little effect. In 2019, doctors diagnosed three cases in New York that were also resistant to a class of drugs, called echinocandins, which were considered a last line of defense. In these cases, there was no evidence that the infections had spread from patient to patient; scientists concluded that drug resistance was formed during treatment. The new cases have spread, the CDC concluded.

In Washington, DC, a cluster of 101 cases of C. auris at a nursing home dedicated to critically ill patients included three who were resistant to all three types of antifungal drugs. A group of 22 people at two hospitals in the Dallas area included two with this level of resistance. The facilities have not been identified. These cases were observed from January to April. Of the five people totally resistant to treatment, three died, two from Texas and one from Washington.

Lyman reported that both are ongoing epidemics and additional infections have been identified since April. But these additional figures have not been released. Researchers reviewed medical records and found no evidence of prior antifungal use in patients in these groups. Health officials have said that means they are passed from person to person.

Almost 2 million people worldwide die from yeast infections each year, and resistance to first-line drugs is on the rise.

Candida auris has been named by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a deadly emerging fungal threat spreading in hospitals around the world.

This mushroom is part of the “package” of the so-called nosocomial infections and has a high resistance to the most common antibiotic therapies used to repel an infection in the enclosure of a health establishment. Added to the difficulty of its early detection is added, and when a treatment is offered it presents a very strong resistance to the various antibiotics commonly used.

Produces serious and invasive diseases that affect the blood, heart and brain with high mortality. According to information from the National Administration of Laboratories and Institutes of Health (ANLIS) “Dr. Carlos Malbrán”, this fungus was discovered in Japan in 2009 following an infection of the ear of a healthy woman. health.

With AP information

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