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Exposure to pollutants such as pesticides makes fungi more resistant to antibiotics and increases their ability to spread disease, according to a study conducted by Portuguese researcher Cristina Silva Pereira.
"We are talking about pollutants distributed in the atmosphere, regardless of the place of emission, who are able to travel to remote areas," said the researcher at the Lusa news agency about of the study published in the scientific journal Microbiome.
Fungi are "able to degrade compounds and even use pollutants as a source of energy in a process that we call mineralization," said the Institute António Xavier of the Institute of chemical and biological technology (ITQB at Oeiras) of the Nova de Lisboa University.
When they are subject to the action of pollutants such as pentachlorophenol (PCP), used in agricultural pesticides, fungal communities specialize and "change the way they work to survive the attack." ". There are "dramatic changes in metabolism" and fungi are becoming "more resistant to antifungals and antibiotics," he said. The "chemical design" of pentachlorophenol is common to many herbicides and "there can be many other" chemical compounds with the same effect.
This increased resistance adds to the increased ability of these fungi communities to survive at higher temperatures such as those resulting from climate change.
In order to know the effects of these pollutants on fungi, the international team coordinated by Cristina Silva Pereira first studied nature: she discovered that in a cork oak forest, the PCP pollutant persisted. in the soil and that fungi actively participated in the degradation attempt. He then carried out laboratory studies demonstrating that contact with pollutants makes these fungi more pathogenic.
"These results are worrying given that fungi are responsible for opportunistic infections that kill 1.5 to 2 million people worldwide each year – more than diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis." Pathogenicity means being able to influence these numbers, "said Cristina Silva Pereira, quoted in a statement from ITQB. "But it's also an opportunity to better understand how the ecosystem works and see how we can take action to avoid threats."
The scientific research department will now "prove that there is an increase in virulence," he told Lusa Cristina Silva Pereira, because "there are now spores [de fungos] everywhere "with human mobility.
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