The United States is concerned about a “threat” to public health. In a recent press release, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US federal agency in charge of health, evokes a spread at “an alarming rate” of a fungus in establishments of American health.
this mushroom is candid auris, a species of yeast – that is, a unicellular fungus – already known for several years. Its particularity: it is particularly persistent on surfaces, be it medical equipment, the floor, bedposts or sheets, but it is also resistant to disinfectant or antifungal products.
A New York hospital even had to rip out part of a patient’s room floor after he died to get rid of the fungus, franceinfo reported, citing an article from the New York Times. In this regard, the CDC is also concerned about the tripling, in 2021, of the number of cases resistant to antifungal drugs recommended for the treatment of infections. candid auris.
A risk for immunosuppressed people
First described in 2009 in Japan, this yeast has since been observed on five continents. Yeah candid auris It does not pose any risk to healthy people, it can be fatal for people with weakened immune systems, such as the elderly or highly hospitalized patients.
Especially serious infections that are also increasing: the CDC thus ensures that between 2019 and 2021 the number of infections on the other side of the Atlantic has tripled, from 476 to 1,471 cases.
If this fungus enters the bloodstream of these immunosuppressed people – through a catheter or a wound, which explains its proliferation in the hospital setting – the infection becomes massive and reaches the nervous system, bones and organs.
“If you are in intensive care and you have candidemia, you have a one in two chance of dying within thirty days,” Stéphane Bretagne, deputy director of the National Reference Center for invasive mycoses and antifungal infections at the Pasteur Institute, told franceinfo.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the mortality rate reaches 29% to 53% of cases. The WHO classifies it as one of the 19 priority fungal pathogens.
“Not a Killer Mushroom”
On the European continent, between 2019 and 2021, some 327 patients were affected in five countries, including France, estimates Eurosurveillance, the European journal dedicated to the surveillance, epidemiology, prevention and control of infectious diseases.
In France, only six cases have been identified. But this fungus worries about its high lethality, points out the Higher Council of Public Health, “essentially attributable to the numerous comorbidities observed in infected or colonized patients.” As a reminder, between 200,000 and 300,000 people are immunocompromised in the country.
However, Stéphane Bretagne, also head of the department of parasitology-mycology at the Saint Louis Hospital (AP-HP), wanted to be reassuring in an article by science and future dating from 2019, when candid auris began promoting itself as the “hospital killer mushroom”.
“Humans, like most mammals, are naturally very resistant to fungi.” And he added: “It is not a murderous fungus, the population must be reassured.”
Source: BFM TV
