Fungal infections kill more people than malaria and tuberculosis

FUNGAL infections are killing six times as many people as malaria each year, a

Lancet study has revealed.

About 3.75million people globally are dying from fungal diseases, which is double previous estimates. The University of Manchester’s Fungal Infection Group found that there were about 6.55million cases of life-threatening fungal infections each year worldwide, using data from more than 80 countries.

Researchers said that the figures “dwarf deaths from other single pathogens”, which are organisms that cause bacterial, viral or other types of disease.

It means six times as many people die from fungal diseases each year than from malaria, which caused 608,000 deaths in 2022, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and almost three times as many deaths as tuberculosis, which caused 1.3million fatalities the same year.

David Denning, professor of infectious disease at the University of Manchester and lead researcher, said: “Our prior estimates of annual mortality were 1.5 to 2million, yet we now find the probable number dying with or of a fungal infection is double this at about 3.75 million.”

The study found that 68 per cent of the deaths, or 2.55 million, were caused directly by a fungal infection, while the remainder involved a fungal disease exacerbating a pre-existing or underlying condition.

Prof Denning found that a third of the 3.23 million deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that occur worldwide each year are linked to infection with the fungus aspergillus. COPD is the third-largest cause of death in the world, behind heart disease and strokes, says the WHO, accounting for six per cent of all deaths.

Prof Denning concluded that “the incidence of fungal disease is substantially more frequent than previously thought”.