Medical experts say one reason for the surge is that more people have compromised immune systems, including cancer patients and those taking medicines after organ transplants. Compounding the problem, research shows, is that rising temperatures appear to have expanded the geographical range of some deadly fungal pathogens, and possibly made them better adapted to human hosts.
fungus does not effect healthy people apart from ringworm and other topical things.
But it's getting warmer
Which may make more of them able to survive in humans, as per the article, which I quoted?
Compounding the problem, research shows, is that rising temperatures appear to have expanded the geographical range of some deadly fungal pathogens, and possibly made them better adapted to human hosts.
I'm fascinated at how much more we (at least the public) are discovering of the effects of climate change.
Basic level was: hotter years, and then we discover new mechanics that comes with this change
The good news there is that we have a 77% effective malaria vaccine and a number of promising candidate Lyme vaccines - it may turn out that a great many insect-borne diseases can be prevented with vaccination once they start affecting people in rich countries.
If any of you are interested in a book that talks about new bizarre fungi associated with the increasing climate, I really recommend "The Fifth Extinction:An Unnatural History", by Elizabeth Kolbert.
The book was published back in 2014, but scientists were already seeing similar effects on animals within the amazon. A lot of animals are thought to be at risk of extinction because of fungus associated with rising temperatures. There was a very big focus on amphibians and small animals. I could totally see that trend expanding across more species, especially after nearly another decade.
I'm pretty sure I read that mammals originally evolved warm blood to help fight fungal infections. If you think about human body temp, it's not much more than ambient temp in a lot of places now. In fact it's often less
I had a sinus infection for several years. Doctors threw every antibiotic at me and nothing stuck. Was told to take antihistamines and see if it cleared up.
I ended up with a bunch of dental cavities from dry mouth and said Enough - I got an appointment with another doctor and pleaded with them for a different prescription. Antifungal. A week later it was gone.
I honestly wonder how much of this could be prevented by doing patient blood/tissue cultures to see what grows
The cynic in me says these things aren't being done as often as they should be because they're expensive and insurance companies like to fight to not pay for them
Routine sepsis protocols have blood cultures included. The problem is blood cultures only pick up a few of the more common fungal infections. If these fungal infections are infact becoming more frequent then the protocol needs to change to include the use of specific fungal culture tube in addition to routine blood cultures. Unfortunately that is going to take time, training, and money to implement.