Deadly yeast fungus has arrived in S.A.
A dangerous yeast fungus is rapidly spreading throughout the United States, and health officials say it’s landed in San Antonio.
Called Candida auris, it is not yet seen as a threat to healthy people, but it has been causing severe illnesses in long-term hospital patients. The yeast is resistant to many commonly used antifungal drugs, making the infections hard to treat.
San Antonio’s Metropolitan Health District on Tuesday reported finding one instance of C. Auris, but the person was neither infected nor sickened by the fungus. “Bexar County has no reports of clinical cases of C. Auris,” the department said.
The fungus causes infections in the bloodstream, wounds and ears.
“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” said Meghan Lyman, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a published scientific paper, Lyman and other researchers found the fungus spread at alarming rates in U.S. health care facilities between 2020 and 2021. They also found that the number of cases resistant to antifungal medications tripled. Between 30 and 60 percent of people with Candida auris died, a finding based on a limited number of patients.
Most of those patient already had an illness, however.
Those at most risk for infection include people who have recently lived in nursing homes and have breathing tubes, feeding tubes or other medical lines entering their bodies. Other risk factors include diabetes, recent surgeries or the use of antibiotic or antifungal medicines.
The yeast first emerged in Japan in 2009, but health experts didn’t report it in the United States until 2016. Since then, Candida auris has been detected nearly 7,500 times in the U.S. and caused just over 3,000 cases of infection. From 2019 to 2021, the number of cases more than tripled, rising from 476 to 1,471.
While it’s not clear why cases of the fungus have increased, the CDC believes it could be because of poor infection prevention and control in health care facilities as well as increased efforts to detect cases.
More information on Candida auris can be found at the CDC’S website.