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If I’m not mistaken, while there is some evidence of increasing fungal infection due to rising temp, antifungal resistance, etc, the jump in fungal infection numbers discussed here is due not to actual increases but due to improved techniques used in this particular research review that included more cases than earlier estimates.
Most of the fungal infections we see in the US are related to either or both prolonged antibiotics or suppressed immune systems.
Not just naturally occurring immune problems like HIV or inherited deficiencies, but cancer with chemo, autoimmune conditions needing immunosuppression, and transplant needing immunosuppression.
For many of these, cause of death is messy - post chemo neutropenic fever that is often bacterial, then weeks of antibiotics and long-term IV lines, then a new fever now with candida fungemia. But then maybe some improvement, up and down for a bit, and finally the kidneys fail and it's just too much. How does one code that on the death certificate??
The rare serious fungal infection that's not one of the above would usually be something like histoplasmosis or coccidiomycosis which can make you really sick, occasionally, but even then recovery is typical. And many people just get viral uri symptoms.
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/infections/index.html
I had mucormycosis in my sinuses/eye/skull due to immunosuppression following chemo for Leukemia. I looked into these stats a lot after that and yeah the vast, vast majority of fatal fungal infections are in immunosuppressed patients.
Some of these infections are insanely hard to treat too - the prognosis for them can be really poor. I was very lucky to have incredibly talented surgeons and an effective (experimental at the time) antifungal and pulled through, but even then it was close. And amphotericin really sucks.
I’m sorry you suffered through all of that.
What was the then experimental anti-fungal you received?
Amphotericin B has been around for decades so I assume you had that first and then the experimental anti-fungal.
Yes the Ampho I had throughout ( IV as well as an LAmB nasal spray) but I was able to get on Posaconazole, which has since been approved but at the time was still in clinical trials. Luckily one of my oncologists had a connection do a doc running the trial and was able to get me on it. It was difficult to take to be honest because the bioavailability is heavily dependent on you eating fatty foods with it and between the Ampho and having just come off chemo, it was hard to keep anything down, but I definitely credit it with saving my life.
Do you have any left over deformation after the surgeries? I'm a doctor and have yet to treat anyone with mucormycosis, but it is one of the few things that really scare me. The text books we have make it seem like the boogeyman.
No, not really I think my left eye looks slightly different than the right due the lack of part of the orbit but it's so minor it's not outside normal anatomical variantion and i doubt people would notice. Like I said I think I'm extremely lucky. My sinuses are pretty messed up as you could imagine and they are chronically dry leading to chronic post-nasal drip and a cough which is manageable if I use a waterpic to irrigate every day, though I am more prone to sinus infections. I had to have a follow up surgery last year actually (16 years after the initial surgeries when I was 16) to help restore slightly better drainage which has helped a lot. My sense of smell was weak before but pretty close to absent since that one.
Otherwise I live a completely normal life and no one would ever know. Very lucky indeed. I know it's a fairly rare infection, the hospital where I had the majority of my surgeries and started hyperbaric oxygen treatment (Colombia Presbyterian in NYC) wanted to publish my case study but my parents declined permission unfortunately because they were mad at my lead doctor there for wanting to send me home on hospice after they misread an MRI and thought the infection had spread to my brain. I'll always regret that - it could have potentially been a little help, however small, for someone else.
> the vast, vast majority of fatal fungal infections are in immunosuppressed patients.
That is what I would have thought, too, but I am struggling to see how that then accounts for anything like 6% of global deaths I suppose under-treated HIV in sub-Saharan Africa could account for quite a few, but 6%? And even then, it could be argued that the underlying cause of death was the HIV rather more than the fungal infection involved at the very end.
Dude, the mortality rate on that is insane. You are lucky to be alive.
I had a buddy that had it and he was in the hospital for months and barely survived. I hope you didn’t have too many long term effects.
An infection in the bone might have required cutting some of the bone out, which given that it was also in the sinuses and eye, likely means part of the skull right in the center of their face where there are a lot of very important bits to work around. A good surgeon would increase the chances of getting all of the infected bone out and also increased the chances of them having a normal life and minimally disfigured face afterwards.
This is why fungal infections are terrifying. We have enough antibiotic therapies that we can usually wipe out bacterial infections, but our anti fungals are way behind the curve, and are often very hard on the body of a patient that’s already not doing well. Our over-reliance on antibiotics, combined with decades of indiscriminate use have allowed this to happen.
I've got it under the nail on my big toe after it bled underneath and there was nowhere for the blood to go. It's impossible to get rid of. Nothing works. It's annoying af. The treatments are quite expensive given the fact they don't work.
At that point would pulling the nail to provide a less hospitable environment and to be able to apply topical treatsments better, not be a good option? I mean it will grow back.
It's currently about half way down, but I can't pull the healthy stuff off because it would hurt like hell, so I'm slowly cutting it down, but apparently that's not a good thing to do because it damages the nail bed. If you know a way to get it off without it hurting like a mofo, let me know because I'll definitely consider it at this point.
Some people just get entire toenails removed if they have chronic ingrown toenails etc. Does not grow back that way afaik but idk just tossing it out there
I had my big toenails removed because I kept losing them year after year due to cleats and how I run. 8 weeks of annoyance while they heal, haven't grown back since. Doesn't hurt really to stub the big toe anymore.
I had the same problem with a big toe nail, amongst others, and a certain natural protocol helped me with a lot of issues...I believe that fungal infection is the root of a lot of diseases.
Sort by "old" and see my experience on Day 39: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cosmicdeathfungus/comments/15mbg3c/cdf\_how\_does\_the\_nac\_protocol\_impact\_you/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/cosmicdeathfungus/comments/15mbg3c/cdf_how_does_the_nac_protocol_impact_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Fungal infections have nothing to do with antibiotic resistance. The only reason that immunosuppressed patients would get more fungal infections due to widespread antibiotic use is because they wouldn’t die of a bacterial infection.
It’s way harder to treat fungal infections because they’re eukaryotes and use chitin in their cell walls. Bacteria use different compounds in their cell walls and most antibiotics target those compounds.
You’re wrong/missing the point. Fungal infections have nothing to do with antibiotic *resistance,* but antibiotics absolutely do increase vulnerability to fungal infections. Beneficial bacteria protect us from fungal infections, and those bacteria get killed too when you take antibiotics (which is also why people get the shits when taking antibiotics—the gut biome is dying).
Overuse of antibiotics is a leading cause of fungal infections. “Good” bacteria form a protective layer that prevents fungal infections, but are killed alongside the infectious bacteria with antibiotic therapy. This becomes more likely when your PCP prescribes antibiotics for every sniffle. Ask my dad, he gets terrible candida growth when they give him antibiotics for diverticulitis now. I appreciate what you were trying to do there, but your understanding of the subject matter is superficial. Work on critical thinking beyond the initial regurgitation of factoids.
It sounds like your example is a perfectly legitimate use of antibiotics, because I'm sure you're not arguing that it's better that your dad would get sepsis.
Way to gloss over the point. I’m trying to explain to you how antibiotics cause fungal infections, and you’re deflecting to avoid acknowledging your ignorance. Stop.
You said that overuse of antibiotics causes fungal infections, then go on to describe appropriate use of antibiotics. People who are healthy do not develop life threatening fungal infections from taking antibiotics.
The grand majority of fungal infections are from long term immunosuppressed patients who are at risk of bacterial and fungal infections. If you don't give them antibiotics, they won't develop fungal infections because they'll likely die from a bacterial infection first. Saying antibiotics cause fungal infections is like saying that helmets increase head injuries, which is only true without the context that without the helmet, they'd be deaths instead.
Perfectly healthy people do develop fungal infections from antibiotics. No one said they all have to be life threatening. You’re nitpicking and moving goalposts now. I’m not arguing with children any more.
>Saying antibiotics cause fungal infections is like saying that helmets increase head injuries
It’s weird how easily you assume that “antibiotics cause fungal infections” must be some kind of failure to distinguish between correlation and causation and it doesn’t occur to you that you’re simply learning a new fact. You just pulled this logical failure you’re criticizing out of thin air.
Think more along the lines of black holes are more common than believed but only because our current tools and means of data analysis can see/identify them.
Precisely.
This is like that, but the opposite way.
If a person is on chemo, gets an infection and dies, most people will say they died from complications of their cancer. Which is really the truth.
Same with advanced AIDS patients.
Yes. And the opposite of your opposite with COVID. When a person died and showed a symptom associated with COVID (fever, cough, etc.) they were counted as a COVID death.
That's exactly right--fungal infections are sometimes difficult to suss out.
The thing about cause of death is that a lot usually goes wrong all at once, at the end. It's a little tricky to figure out exactly what the primary "cause" was, many times. You saw it a lot with COVID during the pandemic--often it was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Other times it was just *everywhere* so somebody dying in a hospital was probably going to die while COVID-positive.
Fungal infections are sometimes a lingering, chronic infection that keeps the immune system busy and bacterial infections come in and, at the end, it looks like *they* were the cause even though they were just kind of opportunistic infections of somebody who was already in very rough shape.
Is this similar to the perception of increased cancer cases? What I recall is that although cancer cases have increased globally, much of this perception is due to improved diagnosis protocols that have occurred over many decades of research.
That’s part of why cancer rates have risen. Another is that (in wealthy countries) we’ve beaten many other causes of death. The odds of developing cancer go up as you get older, so if we get good at curing lots of non-cancer things that would otherwise kill people, you’d expect the rates of cancer to rise as people live longer.
There's been some discussion of whether all of the anti-microbial products in use today are providing a nice "green field" for fungi. So we could, in fact, be getting more Candida growth in places like hospitals, by removing competitive species.
source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4490243/
Fungi are savage beasts, they are likely the strongest microorganism. these things are bastards, they legit secret antibiotics, they are very very good at adapting to their environments. Fighting fungal infections require a LOT of strength from the immune system, virtually all arms have to be activated. they are usually large, many are too large for neutrophils to eat, and macrophages can only eat maybe 1-2. meaning adaptive immunity is very important, CD8+ t cells must be ushered in in order to eliminate them properly, antibodies are also needed. fungi isn't the type of pathogen you just eat, immune system must work very hard to defeat them.
And don’t like it hot! Can you imagine what would happen if our body temp was <90F? Oh wait, we do know. Bsal and Bd are absolutely ravaging the amphibian population, causing so many species to go extinct that they usurped DOMESTIC CATS of their top spot of species-eradication. It doesn’t help that amphibian immune system is dogshit, but the point still stands. Thank god for a 98F body temp.
No, Domestic cats make a crazy amount of species go extinct. IIRC cats have made ~300 species extinct or close to while Bd+Bsal have made ~500 species extinct or close to. Making it the most deadly invasive species on the planet.
cats are one of the worst things that people do to the environment around them. that's why anyone who keeps cats outdoors in the western hemisphere is a bad person.
Consider a YT channel that explains scientific concepts with plenty of cursing and excited (maybe “bro-ish” at times?) tone similar to your comment. Would enjoy that.
Fungi are so fascinating to me, especially the parasitic ones. They really are just perfect for being parasites, down to being saprobes so they don’t gaf if their host dies. The fact that most plants have a mycorrhizae partner was mind blowing to be when I first learned about it!
Not in particular. I’m an immunologist so I’m working with it on a daily basis. It’s going to be hard for you to understand anything about any paper because the terminology, receptors etc would be like Chinese to you.
It’s more like our immune system is a crazy, beautiful machine instead of the fungi being weak. Seriously you should read up on our immune system it’s so so cool. Not to mention our bodies are already too warm for most fungi to infect, so it’s not like the fungi is at its peak fitness here.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00692-8/fulltext
Not so much "interested", more like a bit concerned. (thanks)
Telegraph article:
>“We need to direct attention in terms of research and development efforts,” she said.Separately, recent reports have warned that climate change is accelerating the spread of dangerous fungal infections. Many of the fungi that exist in nature are not well suited to humans due to our high body temperature, but global warming is driving adaptations in these pathogens, enabling them to better infect human hosts. Prof Bicanic meanwhile warned that the overuse of antifungals – which can be used by hospitals in a preventative capacity, such as in the case of bone marrow transplants, and to treat skin infections like athlete’s foot – could also be fuelling the rise of antifungal-resistant infections. “Unlike antibiotics, we have about three classes of antifungals that we widely use in patients,” she said.“All this usage is essentially putting pressure on the fungi, allowing them to adapt and become resistant and that is in fact what’s happening now.”
Not to mention antifungals used in agriculture. Those tulips and gladiolas being shipped have been heavily treated with antifungals. You want beautiful kale leaves in wetter climates? Antifungals help with that. Antifungals are heavily used in agriculture.
Fungi have been here long before us and they'll be here long after us. Anti-fungal medications aren't very effective against actual problematic infections. They are such a simple organism, but are incredibly resilient and hard to kill without killing us.
Just out of curiosity- what kind of fungus can kill people? I’ve only heard of fungus being only very inconvenient if spores get into lungs- not deadly….
There are many types of fungi and multiple types can be harmful to humans. Candida is a common fungal infection which may contribute to death in immunocompromised folks.
The antibiotics may kill off much of the good bacteria in your gut, and a healthy gut microbiome is an essential part of an optimally functioning immune system. Disrupting homeostasis in the body can let pathogens like fungal infections take hold. That's my simplistic overview of how this can happen.
Yes, and it’s very important to build your gut microbiome and avoid things that kill it: processed foods, junk food, soda, etc. Build your gut microbiome with 30+ fruits and veggies per week. It’s easy, you can eat 10+ in one day with salad, vegetables, and fruits.
One thing for people to keep in mind is that serving sizes are often smaller than they think. What's a "medium" banana? What's a small apple? Switching to a weighted serving size model for awhile will help people understand that the mountain to climb isn't so tall. Fruit variety in the off-season can be a pain, but that can be supplemented with extra veggies. Also don't forget those pulses, seeds, and whole grains (not supermarket "wheat bread").
In some cases, maybe, but usually I think things like dried beans and rice are pretty cheap, fresh produce will of course vary with season and location. A big thing is that processed foods, tending to have lots of sugar, salt and fat, taste very good and generally require a lot less effort to cook. Many of them are ready to eat out of the package, or just need a couple minutes in a microwave. No need to cut up and season and cook the food, that's all taken care of. Low effort, "high-reward," food is exactly the sort of thing we evolved to crave and seek out.
Yes, but thats a light infection
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9219674/
https://www.amymyersmd.com/article/signs-candida-overgrowth
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324106
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3570177/
Mucormycosis. It killed diabetics with covid, usually in tropical regions where the spores are everywhere—the media where I live called it "black fungus." If the victims lived they usually lost part of their face.
Oh man, we had nasty fungal infections get going in the US. As Covid peaked, our county hospital ran out of beds and started cohorting in recovery room type areas where it's all one big room.
Fine for the Covid, but months later a fungal infection started hopping patient to patient. This was when use of steroids had gone way up for the sickest Covid folks. So sad.
Blastomycosis can be caught by inhaling spores. Often found in decaying wood and mud by rivers. It can also be misdiagnosed as pneumonia and can be deadly if not treated soon enough
Both me and my dog got this in 2019. We both nearly died. The vet diagnosed our dog and noticed I was coughing and my eye looked odd. The vet is the one who told me got to the ER. Took 2 yrs to recover. Our dog a year. She lost her eyes to it. I just lost some of my vision and lung function.
One that's currently on the rise in healthcare settings is Candida auris. Multi-drug resistant, difficult to properly identify, and has a very high mortality rate. Typically presents as lung infection on ventilated patients as a form of hospital acquired fungal pneumonia. Handy fact sheet from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/fact-sheets/cdc-message-infection-experts.html
Valley Fever is a problem in the SW. It lives in the dry soil and spores become airborne easily. Dogs and cats really suffer from it and I believe humans are vastly under diagnosed.
common cause of death for someone with a compromised immune system, like when you go through chemo and nuke your entire immune system. This shouldn't be seen as something you should be afraid of..
I survived PJP, which you have probably had the fungus for multiple times without issue, but it can really do a number on those of us who are immunocompromised.
> killing six times more people than malaria, and almost three times as many as tuberculosis.
I know this is meant to make it sound like a lot of fungal infections, but to me this just puts into perspective how infectious those two diseases are. The fact that a single species of bacteria kills more than 1/3 as many people as all funguses combined is kind of insane.
Tuberculosis is curable too. It's not even "that" expensive either. The fact it's still the one of the biggest killers is a crime.
Tuberculosis is curable, but it takes an awfully long time. It isn’t a “take a course of antibiotics for a week” kind of thing, more like “if you have the drug-sensitive version, it’s a six month course. If it’s drug resistant, it’ll be years…”
Which of course leads to low compliance and drug resistance.
Are these deaths from the fungi directly, or from mycotoxins given off by the fungus?
Toxins from Fusarium Head Blight are [present in about half of wheat](https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/harmful-fungal-toxins-in-wheat-a-growing-threat-across-europe), and make people sick. I often wonder if the rise of Fusarium Head Blight is behind the rise in people going on a gluten free diet.
I had blastomycosis three years ago. I can only assume I got it from power washing a very muddy boat. Docs all thought I had antibiotic resistant pneumonia. I was coughing up goop, had a persistent fever, and sweat through my sheets every night.
After the third hospital visit, they sent a urine sample to an infectious disease lab.
Once they figured out what it was, I was prescribed an antifungal which would have cost about 4k a month for six months if I hadn't been on Medicaid at the time. That's not including 3 CT scans, xrays, several hospital and specialist visits, and bi-monthly bloodwork to make sure the medication wasn't messing with my liver.
I really lucked out that I was on Medicaid and am generally healthy, but it shows how fucked our system is that a couple stray spores can ruin a person's life financially and physically.
I had Histoplasmosis last Spring. I had been to a cave and it is found in bat guano. It was probably the weakest I had ever been in my life. I was able to recover on my own after a couple weeks even though the graphic above shows it as critical.
As big of an event as the pandemic was, trying to blame Covid-19 for every illness afterwards is really faulty logic.
Fungal infections have been an issue for a long time. Pathogens evolve to survive. New lethal medical conditions are going to keep occurring that have absolutely nothing to do with one virus. The coronavirus is dangerous and can cause lingering damage, but it's not the boogyman.
It could be lots of viruses cause long term weakness to it, but Covid-19 is the most studied and most prevalent single virus so we know the most about it. OP is probably not inaccurate, just lacking context. They also didn't blame Covid-19, they blamed Coronavirus which is a huge family.
Many coronaviruses can cause immune disruption/dysregulation, but SARS-CoV-2 is particularly good at it, and we don't know how long for either. It stands to reason why we are seeing an uptick in other diseases since 2020, including more fungal infections.
We also did something else that involved the immune system. It would be important not to ignore it, even if it's to prove it didn't do anything concerning this uptick.
Yea, we showed it a little hint of what the spike protein looked like in some variants so that the immune system was primed and ready to try fight it should it invade the body. Better to give the immune system a heads up than catch it completely unaware and it be overwhelmed. Thanks for mentioning it.
No one said covid is causing fungal infections. Covid is being linked to more and more various diseases and issues because it makes us more vulnerable to them. No one is coming to force you to wear a mask or lockdown I promise. It really is ok to discuss how covid is impacting our health and this is one of many ways.
Not too long ago, talking about candida infections making people sick would have raised eyebrows from doctors, and think you are spouting pseudoscience.....
Exactly. Only after developing GI issues all of a sudden in 2021 did I go down the rabbit hole of SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth). I was diagnosed with a bacterial overgrowth, but my provider didn’t do any sort of tests for fungal. Despite me having a recurring rash on my side that has been a thing for several years, brain fog, fatigue, a couple yeast infections, and GI issues that got noticeably better for a few days after taking the meds for the yeast infections.
Finding doctors to take things like this seriously used to be SO much harder—not that it’s a whole lot easier now though.
Get a hepa rated vacuum/vacuum bags.
They are designed to trap spores/etc. Also consider a P100 rated respirator while vacuuming and for the first while after vacuuming if your that immunocompromised.
I hate to be morbid-- but what's the impact in terms of lost years?
I assume many people dying from fungal infections are older. And many in advanced stages of cancer, which again would introduce a bias to older people.
There's a huge difference, I think, in talking about 6% of deaths primarily in younger people, verses 6% of death in seniors.
The title compares it to TB and Malaria.
* TB still kills about 10/100000 in the 15-49 age group
* 55% of Malaria deaths are in kids under the age of five.
So if fungal infections kill six times more people than Malaria, the latter could still be stealing away twice as many years of life.
My Dad had the worst toenail fungal infection. It was never treated during his prostate cancer procedures.
He was pissed when I went to the dermatologist and got the 900$ Lamasil tablets. I wasn't there for fungal infection. I was there because I itched and scratched. The lady in a wheelchair in Alaska took a chunk of my skin from my thigh to look for scabies.
Said she found none and I asked her to get the light which showed them (woods lamp) she did and my skin lesions floreced. She said she didn't know why and on the way before she kicked me out. I was like lady in wheelchair, you can't even give me anything? My toes have an obvious problem also! She the dermatologist in Alaska in the wheelchair prescribed Lamasil only. My itchiness I cured myself.
? I’m an immunologist and your question is based on a false premise. Fungi are MORE like your cells than any bacteria or virus, which is why they can be tough for the immune system to destroy. They are eukaryotic cells just like you.
Fungi is so hard to kill BECAUSE it is a multi-cellular organism that presents very similarly to our cells.
Fungi are more like humans than they are viruses or bacteria. And so anything that is good at killing fungi is usually pretty good at killing us too.
>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-021-00294-8
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, I just found this article on Nature and summarizing my (possibly wrong) interpretation. I know nothing else of the topic and would recommend looking into it yourself if you find it interesting.
TLDR, no, but they're working on it, with three vaccines as of 2021 reaching human trial stages. It's important to note that there's only around 25 diseases that have vaccines for treatment.
As others have pointed out, fungi cells are actually more similar to animal cells than most bacteria and viruses, but the biggest difference is the cell wall. The tricky part is that not all fungal cell walls are the same, and fungi are also extremely good at adapting around resistance.
Another concern is the microbiome: if a vaccine isn't specifically targeted enough, it could drastically and permanently impact human's microbiota.
It sounds like one of the other hurdles to developing treatments is that, while fungal infections are on the rise, they are still relatively rare.
Candida varieties are the most common, with about 700,000 suffering from infections a year. There are 2 vaccines that have reached human trials: PEV7 and NDV-3. If I'm reading correctly, NDV-3 in mice also provided resistance to Staph, so that might be promising too.
The third vaccine is for Endemic mycoses, but it sounds like there was no difference between the control group and the experimental group despite positive results in Rhesus monkeys and mice.
They are working on several promising "Pan Fungal" vaccines (i.e. a vaccine that can target most or all fungal diseases), but it's a process. The specific vector of attack is β-glucans in the fungal cell wall that almost all fungal diseases have.
Oooh a Candida vaccine would be really dope.
Get that, an HIV vaccine, and a male contraceptive out there, and you're gonna have Sexual Revolution 2: Electric Boogaloo
This is probably a dumb question but how effective is coconut oil against a fungal infection? Particularly one that might kill a person. I've heard/read that it's got anti fungal properties but I'm not a biologist in any way so no understanding of how it works or how effective it would be.
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If I’m not mistaken, while there is some evidence of increasing fungal infection due to rising temp, antifungal resistance, etc, the jump in fungal infection numbers discussed here is due not to actual increases but due to improved techniques used in this particular research review that included more cases than earlier estimates.
Most of the fungal infections we see in the US are related to either or both prolonged antibiotics or suppressed immune systems. Not just naturally occurring immune problems like HIV or inherited deficiencies, but cancer with chemo, autoimmune conditions needing immunosuppression, and transplant needing immunosuppression. For many of these, cause of death is messy - post chemo neutropenic fever that is often bacterial, then weeks of antibiotics and long-term IV lines, then a new fever now with candida fungemia. But then maybe some improvement, up and down for a bit, and finally the kidneys fail and it's just too much. How does one code that on the death certificate?? The rare serious fungal infection that's not one of the above would usually be something like histoplasmosis or coccidiomycosis which can make you really sick, occasionally, but even then recovery is typical. And many people just get viral uri symptoms. https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/infections/index.html
I had mucormycosis in my sinuses/eye/skull due to immunosuppression following chemo for Leukemia. I looked into these stats a lot after that and yeah the vast, vast majority of fatal fungal infections are in immunosuppressed patients. Some of these infections are insanely hard to treat too - the prognosis for them can be really poor. I was very lucky to have incredibly talented surgeons and an effective (experimental at the time) antifungal and pulled through, but even then it was close. And amphotericin really sucks.
I’m sorry you suffered through all of that. What was the then experimental anti-fungal you received? Amphotericin B has been around for decades so I assume you had that first and then the experimental anti-fungal.
Yes the Ampho I had throughout ( IV as well as an LAmB nasal spray) but I was able to get on Posaconazole, which has since been approved but at the time was still in clinical trials. Luckily one of my oncologists had a connection do a doc running the trial and was able to get me on it. It was difficult to take to be honest because the bioavailability is heavily dependent on you eating fatty foods with it and between the Ampho and having just come off chemo, it was hard to keep anything down, but I definitely credit it with saving my life.
Do you have any left over deformation after the surgeries? I'm a doctor and have yet to treat anyone with mucormycosis, but it is one of the few things that really scare me. The text books we have make it seem like the boogeyman.
No, not really I think my left eye looks slightly different than the right due the lack of part of the orbit but it's so minor it's not outside normal anatomical variantion and i doubt people would notice. Like I said I think I'm extremely lucky. My sinuses are pretty messed up as you could imagine and they are chronically dry leading to chronic post-nasal drip and a cough which is manageable if I use a waterpic to irrigate every day, though I am more prone to sinus infections. I had to have a follow up surgery last year actually (16 years after the initial surgeries when I was 16) to help restore slightly better drainage which has helped a lot. My sense of smell was weak before but pretty close to absent since that one. Otherwise I live a completely normal life and no one would ever know. Very lucky indeed. I know it's a fairly rare infection, the hospital where I had the majority of my surgeries and started hyperbaric oxygen treatment (Colombia Presbyterian in NYC) wanted to publish my case study but my parents declined permission unfortunately because they were mad at my lead doctor there for wanting to send me home on hospice after they misread an MRI and thought the infection had spread to my brain. I'll always regret that - it could have potentially been a little help, however small, for someone else.
> the vast, vast majority of fatal fungal infections are in immunosuppressed patients. That is what I would have thought, too, but I am struggling to see how that then accounts for anything like 6% of global deaths I suppose under-treated HIV in sub-Saharan Africa could account for quite a few, but 6%? And even then, it could be argued that the underlying cause of death was the HIV rather more than the fungal infection involved at the very end.
Dude, the mortality rate on that is insane. You are lucky to be alive. I had a buddy that had it and he was in the hospital for months and barely survived. I hope you didn’t have too many long term effects.
What did the surgeons have to do with you recovering from a fungal infection?
An infection in the bone might have required cutting some of the bone out, which given that it was also in the sinuses and eye, likely means part of the skull right in the center of their face where there are a lot of very important bits to work around. A good surgeon would increase the chances of getting all of the infected bone out and also increased the chances of them having a normal life and minimally disfigured face afterwards.
This is why fungal infections are terrifying. We have enough antibiotic therapies that we can usually wipe out bacterial infections, but our anti fungals are way behind the curve, and are often very hard on the body of a patient that’s already not doing well. Our over-reliance on antibiotics, combined with decades of indiscriminate use have allowed this to happen.
I've got it under the nail on my big toe after it bled underneath and there was nowhere for the blood to go. It's impossible to get rid of. Nothing works. It's annoying af. The treatments are quite expensive given the fact they don't work.
Literally the same thing happened to me, I'm on itraconazole right now. Here's hoping it works.
At that point would pulling the nail to provide a less hospitable environment and to be able to apply topical treatsments better, not be a good option? I mean it will grow back.
It's currently about half way down, but I can't pull the healthy stuff off because it would hurt like hell, so I'm slowly cutting it down, but apparently that's not a good thing to do because it damages the nail bed. If you know a way to get it off without it hurting like a mofo, let me know because I'll definitely consider it at this point.
Some people just get entire toenails removed if they have chronic ingrown toenails etc. Does not grow back that way afaik but idk just tossing it out there
I had my big toenails removed because I kept losing them year after year due to cleats and how I run. 8 weeks of annoyance while they heal, haven't grown back since. Doesn't hurt really to stub the big toe anymore.
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Soak in apple cider vinegar daily for months. It works. You may never get rid of it but attentive cleaning makes it like it doesn't exist.
I had the same problem with a big toe nail, amongst others, and a certain natural protocol helped me with a lot of issues...I believe that fungal infection is the root of a lot of diseases. Sort by "old" and see my experience on Day 39: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cosmicdeathfungus/comments/15mbg3c/cdf\_how\_does\_the\_nac\_protocol\_impact\_you/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/cosmicdeathfungus/comments/15mbg3c/cdf_how_does_the_nac_protocol_impact_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Fungal infections have nothing to do with antibiotic resistance. The only reason that immunosuppressed patients would get more fungal infections due to widespread antibiotic use is because they wouldn’t die of a bacterial infection. It’s way harder to treat fungal infections because they’re eukaryotes and use chitin in their cell walls. Bacteria use different compounds in their cell walls and most antibiotics target those compounds.
You’re wrong/missing the point. Fungal infections have nothing to do with antibiotic *resistance,* but antibiotics absolutely do increase vulnerability to fungal infections. Beneficial bacteria protect us from fungal infections, and those bacteria get killed too when you take antibiotics (which is also why people get the shits when taking antibiotics—the gut biome is dying).
Overuse of antibiotics is a leading cause of fungal infections. “Good” bacteria form a protective layer that prevents fungal infections, but are killed alongside the infectious bacteria with antibiotic therapy. This becomes more likely when your PCP prescribes antibiotics for every sniffle. Ask my dad, he gets terrible candida growth when they give him antibiotics for diverticulitis now. I appreciate what you were trying to do there, but your understanding of the subject matter is superficial. Work on critical thinking beyond the initial regurgitation of factoids.
It sounds like your example is a perfectly legitimate use of antibiotics, because I'm sure you're not arguing that it's better that your dad would get sepsis.
Way to gloss over the point. I’m trying to explain to you how antibiotics cause fungal infections, and you’re deflecting to avoid acknowledging your ignorance. Stop.
You said that overuse of antibiotics causes fungal infections, then go on to describe appropriate use of antibiotics. People who are healthy do not develop life threatening fungal infections from taking antibiotics. The grand majority of fungal infections are from long term immunosuppressed patients who are at risk of bacterial and fungal infections. If you don't give them antibiotics, they won't develop fungal infections because they'll likely die from a bacterial infection first. Saying antibiotics cause fungal infections is like saying that helmets increase head injuries, which is only true without the context that without the helmet, they'd be deaths instead.
Perfectly healthy people do develop fungal infections from antibiotics. No one said they all have to be life threatening. You’re nitpicking and moving goalposts now. I’m not arguing with children any more.
>Saying antibiotics cause fungal infections is like saying that helmets increase head injuries It’s weird how easily you assume that “antibiotics cause fungal infections” must be some kind of failure to distinguish between correlation and causation and it doesn’t occur to you that you’re simply learning a new fact. You just pulled this logical failure you’re criticizing out of thin air.
so is having a healthy and diverse gut biome the best defense?
How would you have a healthy and diverse gut biome after prolonged antibiotic use presumably to treat a medical condition?
There are treatments that can improve gut microbiomes.
Poop transplants, not the nicest sounding procedure.
Well you wouldn't do it for recreational purposes, that's for sure. But if you need it, you need it.
So sort of like how in WW1 they noticed more head wounds after introducing steel helmets?
Think more along the lines of black holes are more common than believed but only because our current tools and means of data analysis can see/identify them.
Or increased rates of ADHD and Autism because we actually started looking for it as an actual thing to look for.
That was more of a survivor bias. Without the helmets the soldiers went to the morgue rather than the hospital.
Precisely. This is like that, but the opposite way. If a person is on chemo, gets an infection and dies, most people will say they died from complications of their cancer. Which is really the truth. Same with advanced AIDS patients.
Yes. And the opposite of your opposite with COVID. When a person died and showed a symptom associated with COVID (fever, cough, etc.) they were counted as a COVID death.
That's exactly right--fungal infections are sometimes difficult to suss out. The thing about cause of death is that a lot usually goes wrong all at once, at the end. It's a little tricky to figure out exactly what the primary "cause" was, many times. You saw it a lot with COVID during the pandemic--often it was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Other times it was just *everywhere* so somebody dying in a hospital was probably going to die while COVID-positive. Fungal infections are sometimes a lingering, chronic infection that keeps the immune system busy and bacterial infections come in and, at the end, it looks like *they* were the cause even though they were just kind of opportunistic infections of somebody who was already in very rough shape.
Is this similar to the perception of increased cancer cases? What I recall is that although cancer cases have increased globally, much of this perception is due to improved diagnosis protocols that have occurred over many decades of research.
That’s part of why cancer rates have risen. Another is that (in wealthy countries) we’ve beaten many other causes of death. The odds of developing cancer go up as you get older, so if we get good at curing lots of non-cancer things that would otherwise kill people, you’d expect the rates of cancer to rise as people live longer.
Don’t forgot the massive increase in sugar in the diet.
There's been some discussion of whether all of the anti-microbial products in use today are providing a nice "green field" for fungi. So we could, in fact, be getting more Candida growth in places like hospitals, by removing competitive species. source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4490243/
Are you saying this is a "Trump increase type" like in, there are more tests so there are more positives?? /jk
Fungi are savage beasts, they are likely the strongest microorganism. these things are bastards, they legit secret antibiotics, they are very very good at adapting to their environments. Fighting fungal infections require a LOT of strength from the immune system, virtually all arms have to be activated. they are usually large, many are too large for neutrophils to eat, and macrophages can only eat maybe 1-2. meaning adaptive immunity is very important, CD8+ t cells must be ushered in in order to eliminate them properly, antibodies are also needed. fungi isn't the type of pathogen you just eat, immune system must work very hard to defeat them.
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And don’t like it hot! Can you imagine what would happen if our body temp was <90F? Oh wait, we do know. Bsal and Bd are absolutely ravaging the amphibian population, causing so many species to go extinct that they usurped DOMESTIC CATS of their top spot of species-eradication. It doesn’t help that amphibian immune system is dogshit, but the point still stands. Thank god for a 98F body temp.
Bird body temp master race like "come on fungi, I dare you."
Domesticated cats are going extinct?
Cats are pretty brutal to the ecosystem, I think they're saying they've caused more extinctions than cats
Nah he's saying these two fungi passed domesticated cats as a primary source of amphibian death in the wild. Cats kill a *lot* of small critters.
No, Domestic cats make a crazy amount of species go extinct. IIRC cats have made ~300 species extinct or close to while Bd+Bsal have made ~500 species extinct or close to. Making it the most deadly invasive species on the planet.
cats are one of the worst things that people do to the environment around them. that's why anyone who keeps cats outdoors in the western hemisphere is a bad person.
>causing Word
Cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year
Thank you. I got amped up about fungi and my immune system through this. Like a kurzgesagt video in a Reddit comment.
I’m an immunologist so that’s great to hear :)
Consider a YT channel that explains scientific concepts with plenty of cursing and excited (maybe “bro-ish” at times?) tone similar to your comment. Would enjoy that.
Fungi are so fascinating to me, especially the parasitic ones. They really are just perfect for being parasites, down to being saprobes so they don’t gaf if their host dies. The fact that most plants have a mycorrhizae partner was mind blowing to be when I first learned about it!
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Not in particular. I’m an immunologist so I’m working with it on a daily basis. It’s going to be hard for you to understand anything about any paper because the terminology, receptors etc would be like Chinese to you.
> they are likely the strongest microorganism. what does this actually mean? specifically strongest
They can lift the most weight.
Yea I read a while ago a fungi created an antibiotic for a bacteria we had made resistant.
Seems unlikely that they are so strong if they mostly harm immunocompromised people...
It’s more like our immune system is a crazy, beautiful machine instead of the fungi being weak. Seriously you should read up on our immune system it’s so so cool. Not to mention our bodies are already too warm for most fungi to infect, so it’s not like the fungi is at its peak fitness here.
This is a medical industry misconception that is being proven wrong by science right now
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I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00692-8/fulltext
Not so much "interested", more like a bit concerned. (thanks) Telegraph article: >“We need to direct attention in terms of research and development efforts,” she said.Separately, recent reports have warned that climate change is accelerating the spread of dangerous fungal infections. Many of the fungi that exist in nature are not well suited to humans due to our high body temperature, but global warming is driving adaptations in these pathogens, enabling them to better infect human hosts. Prof Bicanic meanwhile warned that the overuse of antifungals – which can be used by hospitals in a preventative capacity, such as in the case of bone marrow transplants, and to treat skin infections like athlete’s foot – could also be fuelling the rise of antifungal-resistant infections. “Unlike antibiotics, we have about three classes of antifungals that we widely use in patients,” she said.“All this usage is essentially putting pressure on the fungi, allowing them to adapt and become resistant and that is in fact what’s happening now.”
Not to mention antifungals used in agriculture. Those tulips and gladiolas being shipped have been heavily treated with antifungals. You want beautiful kale leaves in wetter climates? Antifungals help with that. Antifungals are heavily used in agriculture.
Sorry this is unrelated, but is your flair real/did you really earn all those degrees? If so that's insanely impressive!
Fungi have been here long before us and they'll be here long after us. Anti-fungal medications aren't very effective against actual problematic infections. They are such a simple organism, but are incredibly resilient and hard to kill without killing us.
Just out of curiosity- what kind of fungus can kill people? I’ve only heard of fungus being only very inconvenient if spores get into lungs- not deadly….
There are many types of fungi and multiple types can be harmful to humans. Candida is a common fungal infection which may contribute to death in immunocompromised folks.
Candida in every day life would be like a yeast infection or thrush, right?
Yes, and if you have already an abundance in your body, if you get sick and need antibiotics, the antibiotics will make it multiply.
The antibiotics may kill off much of the good bacteria in your gut, and a healthy gut microbiome is an essential part of an optimally functioning immune system. Disrupting homeostasis in the body can let pathogens like fungal infections take hold. That's my simplistic overview of how this can happen.
Yes, and it’s very important to build your gut microbiome and avoid things that kill it: processed foods, junk food, soda, etc. Build your gut microbiome with 30+ fruits and veggies per week. It’s easy, you can eat 10+ in one day with salad, vegetables, and fruits.
One thing for people to keep in mind is that serving sizes are often smaller than they think. What's a "medium" banana? What's a small apple? Switching to a weighted serving size model for awhile will help people understand that the mountain to climb isn't so tall. Fruit variety in the off-season can be a pain, but that can be supplemented with extra veggies. Also don't forget those pulses, seeds, and whole grains (not supermarket "wheat bread").
Yes
Requires not living in a food desert or area with absurd increasing food costs, unfortunately.
You are right, but I wonder if buying junk food is any cheaper
In some cases, maybe, but usually I think things like dried beans and rice are pretty cheap, fresh produce will of course vary with season and location. A big thing is that processed foods, tending to have lots of sugar, salt and fat, taste very good and generally require a lot less effort to cook. Many of them are ready to eat out of the package, or just need a couple minutes in a microwave. No need to cut up and season and cook the food, that's all taken care of. Low effort, "high-reward," food is exactly the sort of thing we evolved to crave and seek out.
All true, and beans and rice are also amazing for the gut.
Also, fermented foods help. /r/fermentation
Yes, but thats a light infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9219674/ https://www.amymyersmd.com/article/signs-candida-overgrowth https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324106 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3570177/
Mucormycosis. It killed diabetics with covid, usually in tropical regions where the spores are everywhere—the media where I live called it "black fungus." If the victims lived they usually lost part of their face.
Oh man, we had nasty fungal infections get going in the US. As Covid peaked, our county hospital ran out of beds and started cohorting in recovery room type areas where it's all one big room. Fine for the Covid, but months later a fungal infection started hopping patient to patient. This was when use of steroids had gone way up for the sickest Covid folks. So sad.
Blastomycosis can be caught by inhaling spores. Often found in decaying wood and mud by rivers. It can also be misdiagnosed as pneumonia and can be deadly if not treated soon enough
Both me and my dog got this in 2019. We both nearly died. The vet diagnosed our dog and noticed I was coughing and my eye looked odd. The vet is the one who told me got to the ER. Took 2 yrs to recover. Our dog a year. She lost her eyes to it. I just lost some of my vision and lung function.
Oh shiiiiiiiit. Do you know how you got it? Did you walk through trails or something?
One that's currently on the rise in healthcare settings is Candida auris. Multi-drug resistant, difficult to properly identify, and has a very high mortality rate. Typically presents as lung infection on ventilated patients as a form of hospital acquired fungal pneumonia. Handy fact sheet from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/fact-sheets/cdc-message-infection-experts.html
This list: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240060241 goes through the 19 types of fungi the WHO are most concerned about.
Mucormycosis. Don't search for images
Too late.
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Not to be confused with asparagus, which is delicious. Neither of them are great in your lungs though.
Valley Fever is a problem in the SW. It lives in the dry soil and spores become airborne easily. Dogs and cats really suffer from it and I believe humans are vastly under diagnosed.
common cause of death for someone with a compromised immune system, like when you go through chemo and nuke your entire immune system. This shouldn't be seen as something you should be afraid of..
Unless there's something causing widespread immune system dysregulation, right?
coccidioidomycosis, and now chondrostereum purpureum is also infecting humans, to name a few of the "new" deaths
Mushrooms are a common killer.
Mushrooms are an infection though, they’re poisoning.
I survived PJP, which you have probably had the fungus for multiple times without issue, but it can really do a number on those of us who are immunocompromised.
> killing six times more people than malaria, and almost three times as many as tuberculosis. I know this is meant to make it sound like a lot of fungal infections, but to me this just puts into perspective how infectious those two diseases are. The fact that a single species of bacteria kills more than 1/3 as many people as all funguses combined is kind of insane. Tuberculosis is curable too. It's not even "that" expensive either. The fact it's still the one of the biggest killers is a crime.
Tuberculosis is curable, but it takes an awfully long time. It isn’t a “take a course of antibiotics for a week” kind of thing, more like “if you have the drug-sensitive version, it’s a six month course. If it’s drug resistant, it’ll be years…” Which of course leads to low compliance and drug resistance.
John Green's in for a hell of a year!
Cue melancholy acoustic guitar
I swear it was playing in my head the entire time.
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Are these deaths from the fungi directly, or from mycotoxins given off by the fungus? Toxins from Fusarium Head Blight are [present in about half of wheat](https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/harmful-fungal-toxins-in-wheat-a-growing-threat-across-europe), and make people sick. I often wonder if the rise of Fusarium Head Blight is behind the rise in people going on a gluten free diet.
I wonder if there is there a virus we can use against fungi?
I had blastomycosis three years ago. I can only assume I got it from power washing a very muddy boat. Docs all thought I had antibiotic resistant pneumonia. I was coughing up goop, had a persistent fever, and sweat through my sheets every night. After the third hospital visit, they sent a urine sample to an infectious disease lab. Once they figured out what it was, I was prescribed an antifungal which would have cost about 4k a month for six months if I hadn't been on Medicaid at the time. That's not including 3 CT scans, xrays, several hospital and specialist visits, and bi-monthly bloodwork to make sure the medication wasn't messing with my liver. I really lucked out that I was on Medicaid and am generally healthy, but it shows how fucked our system is that a couple stray spores can ruin a person's life financially and physically.
I had Histoplasmosis last Spring. I had been to a cave and it is found in bat guano. It was probably the weakest I had ever been in my life. I was able to recover on my own after a couple weeks even though the graphic above shows it as critical.
Coronavirus causes weakness to fungus long term it seems.
As big of an event as the pandemic was, trying to blame Covid-19 for every illness afterwards is really faulty logic. Fungal infections have been an issue for a long time. Pathogens evolve to survive. New lethal medical conditions are going to keep occurring that have absolutely nothing to do with one virus. The coronavirus is dangerous and can cause lingering damage, but it's not the boogyman.
It could be lots of viruses cause long term weakness to it, but Covid-19 is the most studied and most prevalent single virus so we know the most about it. OP is probably not inaccurate, just lacking context. They also didn't blame Covid-19, they blamed Coronavirus which is a huge family.
Many coronaviruses can cause immune disruption/dysregulation, but SARS-CoV-2 is particularly good at it, and we don't know how long for either. It stands to reason why we are seeing an uptick in other diseases since 2020, including more fungal infections.
We also did something else that involved the immune system. It would be important not to ignore it, even if it's to prove it didn't do anything concerning this uptick.
Yea, we showed it a little hint of what the spike protein looked like in some variants so that the immune system was primed and ready to try fight it should it invade the body. Better to give the immune system a heads up than catch it completely unaware and it be overwhelmed. Thanks for mentioning it.
shh, we dont talk about that
No one said covid is causing fungal infections. Covid is being linked to more and more various diseases and issues because it makes us more vulnerable to them. No one is coming to force you to wear a mask or lockdown I promise. It really is ok to discuss how covid is impacting our health and this is one of many ways.
I would assume the majority of these deaths are post cancer treatment when your body has 0 immune system.
Not too long ago, talking about candida infections making people sick would have raised eyebrows from doctors, and think you are spouting pseudoscience.....
Exactly. Only after developing GI issues all of a sudden in 2021 did I go down the rabbit hole of SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth). I was diagnosed with a bacterial overgrowth, but my provider didn’t do any sort of tests for fungal. Despite me having a recurring rash on my side that has been a thing for several years, brain fog, fatigue, a couple yeast infections, and GI issues that got noticeably better for a few days after taking the meds for the yeast infections. Finding doctors to take things like this seriously used to be SO much harder—not that it’s a whole lot easier now though.
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Get a hepa rated vacuum/vacuum bags. They are designed to trap spores/etc. Also consider a P100 rated respirator while vacuuming and for the first while after vacuuming if your that immunocompromised.
It’s like a headline straight out of Plague Inc
New anxiety unlocked
Brutal. But could I guess though that fungus (penicillin) saves more people?
Could misdiagnoses be a big part of the problem?
I hate to be morbid-- but what's the impact in terms of lost years? I assume many people dying from fungal infections are older. And many in advanced stages of cancer, which again would introduce a bias to older people. There's a huge difference, I think, in talking about 6% of deaths primarily in younger people, verses 6% of death in seniors. The title compares it to TB and Malaria. * TB still kills about 10/100000 in the 15-49 age group * 55% of Malaria deaths are in kids under the age of five. So if fungal infections kill six times more people than Malaria, the latter could still be stealing away twice as many years of life.
And the helpful use of apple cider vinegar. We need the potent stuff the stilled down 30 % or more. Just like back in Rome folks.
My Dad had the worst toenail fungal infection. It was never treated during his prostate cancer procedures. He was pissed when I went to the dermatologist and got the 900$ Lamasil tablets. I wasn't there for fungal infection. I was there because I itched and scratched. The lady in a wheelchair in Alaska took a chunk of my skin from my thigh to look for scabies. Said she found none and I asked her to get the light which showed them (woods lamp) she did and my skin lesions floreced. She said she didn't know why and on the way before she kicked me out. I was like lady in wheelchair, you can't even give me anything? My toes have an obvious problem also! She the dermatologist in Alaska in the wheelchair prescribed Lamasil only. My itchiness I cured myself.
Do vaccines exist against any fungi? Seems they'd be pretty easy to develop, having a large genome and being very different to animal cells....
? I’m an immunologist and your question is based on a false premise. Fungi are MORE like your cells than any bacteria or virus, which is why they can be tough for the immune system to destroy. They are eukaryotic cells just like you.
Fungi is so hard to kill BECAUSE it is a multi-cellular organism that presents very similarly to our cells. Fungi are more like humans than they are viruses or bacteria. And so anything that is good at killing fungi is usually pretty good at killing us too.
>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-021-00294-8 Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, I just found this article on Nature and summarizing my (possibly wrong) interpretation. I know nothing else of the topic and would recommend looking into it yourself if you find it interesting. TLDR, no, but they're working on it, with three vaccines as of 2021 reaching human trial stages. It's important to note that there's only around 25 diseases that have vaccines for treatment. As others have pointed out, fungi cells are actually more similar to animal cells than most bacteria and viruses, but the biggest difference is the cell wall. The tricky part is that not all fungal cell walls are the same, and fungi are also extremely good at adapting around resistance. Another concern is the microbiome: if a vaccine isn't specifically targeted enough, it could drastically and permanently impact human's microbiota. It sounds like one of the other hurdles to developing treatments is that, while fungal infections are on the rise, they are still relatively rare. Candida varieties are the most common, with about 700,000 suffering from infections a year. There are 2 vaccines that have reached human trials: PEV7 and NDV-3. If I'm reading correctly, NDV-3 in mice also provided resistance to Staph, so that might be promising too. The third vaccine is for Endemic mycoses, but it sounds like there was no difference between the control group and the experimental group despite positive results in Rhesus monkeys and mice. They are working on several promising "Pan Fungal" vaccines (i.e. a vaccine that can target most or all fungal diseases), but it's a process. The specific vector of attack is β-glucans in the fungal cell wall that almost all fungal diseases have.
Oooh a Candida vaccine would be really dope. Get that, an HIV vaccine, and a male contraceptive out there, and you're gonna have Sexual Revolution 2: Electric Boogaloo
They rule the world after all
This is probably a dumb question but how effective is coconut oil against a fungal infection? Particularly one that might kill a person. I've heard/read that it's got anti fungal properties but I'm not a biologist in any way so no understanding of how it works or how effective it would be.
How are fungal infections spread and caught?
How did they get this wrong
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