The global burden and death toll from fungi has increased significantly over the past decade, a new study finds. The study estimated that fungal infections kill about 4 million people a year, nearly double the number of deaths estimated in a similar study in 2012. Co-infections such as HIV and tuberculosis, lack of rapid and reliable diagnostic tests, and increasing antifungal drug resistance are thought to be contributing factors. The main cause of these deaths.
The new study is by David Denning, a fungal infection researcher at the University of Manchester, UK. More than a decade ago, Denning and his colleagues review We have compiled available data on the global morbidity and mortality of fungal infections, especially those that can invade our bodies systemically and cause serious illness. At the time, they estimated that fungi directly caused or contributed to about 2 million deaths each year.
In this latest paper, published Last week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Dr Dennings set out to measure how common and deadly these infections were from 2019 to 2021. To do so, he reviewed dozens of papers published between 2010 and 2023 and ultimately analyzed data collected from more than 120 countries.
Dennings estimates that 6.5 million invasive fungal infections and 3.8 million fungus-related deaths currently occur worldwide each year. He also calculated that about 2.5 million of these deaths were directly attributable to the fungus. As additional background, recent studies estimate that overall infectious disease is: cause or contribute to Approximately 14 million people die each year.
People get sick from viruses and bacteria on a daily basis, but fungi are usually less suited to infecting us. Most species cannot survive long in our warm bodies, and our immune systems are usually very capable of resisting fungal infections. However, in recent decades, several factors have made these infections more common. New drugs have allowed people to live with donated organs and survive conditions that were once fatal, but at the cost of reduced immune responses, among other things.some scientists You can also guess That climate change helped some fungal species candida aurishave evolved to be resistant to heat, which makes them more susceptible to infection in humans.
Dennings points out that fungus-related deaths occurring today are often associated with other health problems. For example, he estimates that invasive aspergillosis (aspergillosis) causes more than 2 million infections and 1.8 million deaths annually. aspergillus Fungi that usually affect the lungs occur in people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung or blood cancers, tuberculosis infections, or in intensive care. It is also estimated that fungal infections in general contribute to nearly half of the 600,000 deaths that occur each year from poorly controlled HIV/AIDS. Denning’s tally may also be an underestimate. That’s because Denning doesn’t take into account the potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus disease is known to have caused fungal bacterial outbreaks in hard-hit hospitals.
Dennings says many of these deaths could have been prevented if doctors were better able to proactively recognize fungal diseases. However, he added that current diagnostic methods often fail to detect these infections even when doctors suspect they are present. Also, because there are relatively few antifungal drugs available, some bacteria quickly learn how to defeat these treatments.
Scientists are working to develop other prevention measures, such as new drugs and vaccines. But Dennings says more accurate and readily available tests are also needed to contain the growing fungal threat to humanity.
“Severe fungal diseases occur when people are already sick, except in healthy people and in people who live or work in moldy homes or work environments. Timely diagnosis is desperately needed and fungi need to be taken very seriously,” Dennings said. article We discuss his new research published in The Conversation.