Study Reveals Fungal Infections Are Becoming Harder To Treat

NBC News (7/9, Sullivan) reports a study published in The Lancet Microbe on Wednesday revealed that infections caused by Aspergillus fumigatus are “getting harder to treat as they grow more resistant to available drugs.” The fungus is “is one of the World Health Organization’s top concerns on its list of priority fungi, which notes that death rates for people with drug-resistant Aspergillus infections range from 47%-88%.” For the study, researchers “analyzed more than 12,600 samples of Aspergillus,” finding about 2,000 “harbored mutations associated with resistance to azoles, the class of antifungals used to treat the infections.” Nearly 60 people had invasive infections, “13 of which were azole-resistant. In those people, nearly 86% were infected with multiple strains of the fungi, making treatment even more complicated.” Overall, the findings “illustrate a larger trend of growing pressure on the few drugs available to treat fungal infections.”