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According to a new study published in mBio, an open access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, global warming may have played a determining role in the emergence of Candida auris. C. auris, who is often multidrug resistant and poses a serious threat to public health, may be the first example of a new fungal disease resulting from climate change.
"The argument we make on the basis of comparison with other nearby fungi is that, when the climate warmed up, some of these organisms, including Candida auris, adapted to the higher temperature and, when they adapt, transform human protection, temperatures, "said Arturo Casadevall, MD, PhD, president of the chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . "Global warming could lead to new fungal diseases that we are not even aware of yet."
C. auris appeared independently on three continents simultaneously, each clade being genetically distinct. "What is unusual about Candida auris is that it has appeared on three continents at the same time, and isolates from India, South Africa and South America are not linked. arrived to allow this body to boil and cause disease.We started to consider the possibility that it is climate change, "said Casadevall. "The reason why fungal infections are so rare in humans is that most fungi in the environment can not grow at temperature or in our body." The resistance of mammals to invasive fungal diseases results from a combination of elevated basal temperatures that create a zone of thermal restriction and advanced host defense mechanisms in the form of adaptive and innate immunity. .
In the new study, researchers compared the thermal susceptibility of C. auris to some of its phylogenetic close relatives. The researchers found that C. auris is able to grow at higher temperatures than most closely related species, and that most related species do not tolerate temperatures in mammals. According to researchers, adaptation to higher temperatures is one of the causes of the emergence of C. auris.
"What this study suggests is the beginning of the adaptation of fungi to higher temperatures, and we will have more and more problems over the century," Casadevall said. "Global warming will lead to the selection of more thermally tolerant fungal lines, so that they can cross the thermal restriction zone of mammals."
Casadevall said that if better surveillance systems were in place, the rise in C. auris would have been detected earlier. "We need to invest in better surveillance of fungal diseases, we have a pretty good command of the flu and the diseases that cause diarrhea or are contagious, but fungal diseases are generally not contagious and, therefore, no one really took the trouble to document them well, "said Casadevall. . "If more mushrooms were to cross, you would not really know it until someone started to report them in the literature."
Source: American Society for Microbiology
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