Deadly Super Yeast Found in the Wild for the First Time
▻https://gizmodo.com/deadly-super-yeast-found-in-the-wild-for-the-first-time-1846485781
A frightening superbug yeast that’s killing people in hospitals can also survive just fine outside of them, according to a new study out Tuesday. For the first time, researchers say they’ve discovered multidrug-resistant strains of the fungus Candida auris in a natural environment, in the remote wetlands of India. The findings indicate that these sorts of environments could be the yeast’s native home, while also providing evidence that warming temperatures due to climate change have recently made the fungus dangerous to humans, as some scientists have theorized.
C. auris was first discovered in 2009 by doctors in Japan, who isolated it from a patient’s ear infection (the first known cases date back to the mid-1990s, however). Since then, the yeast has been found in over a dozen countries, including the U.S. It can cause life-threatening infections, especially in already weakened hospital patients. But what makes the yeast especially scary is that it’s often resistant to multiple antifungal medications at once, making these infections difficult to treat and frequently fatal. The fungus is also a survivor outside of the human body, so once it’s established somewhere, it’s incredibly hard to remove it from the environment. If that wasn’t enough, C. auris can’t be identified easily through conventional tests, which can delay care and increase the risk of death.
There have only been around 1,600 cases of the yeast infection identified in the U.S. since 2009, but it’s considered one of the most serious emerging germ threats we face today.
