A dangerous fungal germ has learned how to completely outsmart humanity—and not for the first time.
In a recent report, scientists in Kenya detailed a worrying case of Candidozyma auris found in a 28-year-old patient. The person’s infection was resistant to all major types of antifungal drugs, they found. This particular strain might be unrelated to past pan-resistant cases, the researchers say, suggesting that this fungus can repeatedly adapt to all of our available weapons against it.
The strain’s “resistance to four major antifungal classes highlights the escalating threat of untreatable fungal infections, particularly in settings with limited access to novel antifungal agents,” the authors wrote in their paper, published late last month in the journal Scientific Reports.
C. auris (formerly known as Candida auris) has emerged as one of the most concerning superbug threats in the world. Though many people carry the fungus on their skin without harm, it can cause severe, life-threatening infections in people with weakened immune systems or generally poorer health. What makes C. auris especially scary is that it’s uniquely adept at evolving resistance to the most common medications used to treat fungal infections.
This latest case was documented in a woman who visited a hospital for an elective inpatient surgery. Afterward, she developed a hospital-acquired infection at the surgical site. Though she was given antibiotics for a potential bacterial infection, she continued to experience illness, and a swab of her wound pus revealed the presence of C. auris. The researchers eventually confirmed that her strain was resistant to all four major antifungal classes.
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