Second-ever case of rare fungus resistant to four antifungal drug classes detected in Kenya - Medical Xpress

Image of the plate showing different rates of cell growth. New research has revealed an unexpected new mechanism through which the killer fungus Candida auris is resisting antifungal drug treatment. A team led by the University of Exeter and City St George's, University of London, discovered that the fungus creates multiple versions of its entire genome, including mutating a gene that plays a role in cell wall integrity, called "Crazy-one" (CRZ1). The study is set to appear in Nature Communications and is currently available on the bioRxiv preprint server.

There's a new fungus amongus, and it's raising red flags among health care experts because it resists all the major antifungal treatments. The discovery involves Candidozyma auris (formerly known as Candida auris), an emerging fungal pathogen that has already become a serious problem in hospitals around the world. Since it was first described in 2009, this fungus has spread to more than 60 countries across six continents, causing healthcare-associated outbreaks and invasive infections, with mortality rates of 30–50 percent reported in some situations. The fungus can persist in healthcare environments and spread easily between patients. Because of its combination of antifungal resistance and potential for wider spread, the World Health Organization designated C. auris a critical-priority fungal pathogen in 2022. But the particular strain of this fungus described in a new paper has something especially troubling going for it: laboratory testing found it resistant to all four major classes of antifungal drugs. The isolate was recovered from a 28-year-old woman who developed a hospital-acquired surgical-site infection after elective surgery at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.