Article Title: Catastrophic threat’: CDC chief fears a deadly superbug’s spread
Source: STAT
Date: 4-21-17
Link: https://www.statnews.com/2017/04/21/superbug-cdc-fungus-candida-auris/
Summary: The CDC is very busy these day with antibiotic resistant microbes and various outbreaks, but there are other deadly lesser known microbes spreading about in hospitals too. This article reports on one of the CDC’s most recent foes, the fungus Candida auras. This fungus is very deadly to humans, resistant to many antifungals, and like to infect people who are already injured. Where does it live? Hospitals. Just one more thing the CDC has to deal with while their budget is getting slashed by the president to make room for more military spending.
Connection: This article made me think of the chapters on controlling microbial growth. Bacteria due to their many differences from Eukaryote have lots of targets for antibacterial medications. However fungus are Eukaryote and thus such harder to fight. Since this fungus is already resistant to many of our antifungal medications it is really scary. Our only hope might good disinfectants to keep hospitals clean.
Critical Analysis: The articles topic, Candida auras is very interesting. When most people think of antimicrobial resistant microbes they only think of bacteria. However, fungus can also be resistant to antimicrobial agents. The article doesn’t really provide to much information on the fungus sadly. However I think its purpose was just to raise awareness.
Question: I would love to know a little bit more about this fungus and how it has resistance to things. How do fungus fight antifungal medication?
1 Comment for “Deadly Antifungal Resistant Fungus”
sldempster
says:I found this article pretty good at explaining this drug resistant fungi. I found a paper which describes a possible mechanism for how Candida and other fungi can develope resistance towards multiple antifungi medication. https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/9988500. This seems to be atributed to the overexpression of two genes, BEN and CDR1. The overexpression of either of these genes can make these fungi less suseptible to antifungial drugs.