COVID-19 may promote the spread of drug-resistant ‘superfungus’
Brazil has reported its first cases of a potentially fatal fungal infection called Candida auris (C. auris) that's becoming more and more resistant to antifungal drugs.
The country have been on high alert for the emerging infection since 2016, when the first outbreak in the Americas was reported in Venezuela.
Outbreaks soon followed in Colombia, Panama, Chile, and the U.S., but there have been no cases in Brazil until December 2020, soon after a second wave of COVID-19Trusted Source began in the country.
Researchers led by Arnaldo Colombo, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Special Mycology Laboratory at the Federal University of São Paulo, analyzed samples from the first two cases. Both occurred in the COVID-19 intensive care unit of a hospital in Salvador, northeast Brazil.
The hospital has reported nine further cases of infection or asymptomatic colonization by the fungus.
In March 2021, Dr. Colombo and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Fungi that the fungus remained highly vunerable to antifungal drugs.
However, since that time, they have detected a steep increase in the resistance of C. auris to fluconazole and a class of antifungal drugs called echinocandins in samples from a healthcare facility.
“In the case of C. auris within samples recently isolated in Salvador, for instance, the dose should be four to five times bigger than the dose used to inactivate the isolate cultured in December 2020,” says Dr. Colombo.
No other cases have already been reported in Brazil, but Dr. Colombo believes there are grounds for concern.
“The species quickly becomes resistant to multiple drugs and isn’t very sensitive to the disinfectants utilized by hospitals and clinics,” he says.
“Consequently, it’s in a position to persist in hospitals, where it colonizes health personnel and ends up infecting patients with extreme COVID-19 and other long-stay critical patients.”
High mortality rate
The CDC reports that C. auris could cause infections of the bloodstream, wounds, and the ear.
It estimates that 30-60% of folks with C. auris infections die, though a number of these patients also had other life threatening illnesses.
Dr. Colombo’s paper mentioned that superinfection by C. auris in critically ill patients with COVID-19 is estimated to have a 30-day mortality rate of above 50%.
The CDCTrusted Source says that, previously, C. auris infections were mostly seen in long-term care facilities for folks with severe illnesses.
However, since the start of the pandemic, outbreaks have already been occurring in the COVID-19 units of hospitals.
“Through the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise in C. auris cases, particularly in a few areas of america that hadn't previously had many cases,” said Dr. Meghan Marie Lyman from the CDC’s Mycotic Diseases Branch
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
