US first cases of drug-resistant fungal infection

US first cases of drug-resistant fungal infection

Thirteen individuals have become ill from a serious and sometimes fatal fungal infection previously unseen in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The fungus, Candida auris, is known to occur in health care settings such as hospitals and nursing homes.

Source: Physician's Weekly

“We need to act now to better understand, contain and stop the spread of this drug-resistant fungus,” the CDC’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a statement. “This is an emerging threat, and we need to protect vulnerable patients and others.”

"It appears that C. auris arrived in the United States only in the past few years," Dr. Tom Chiller, chief of the CDC's Mycotic Diseases Branch, said in statement. He added that scientists are working to better understand the fungus so they can develop recommendations to protect those at risk.

The first seven cases, which are described in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, occurred in New York, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey in 2013 (one case), 2015 (one case), and this year (five cases). The older cases were identified through a review of patients’ lab records conducted after the CDC sent its clinical alert in June. All seven of the patients had been hospitalized for cancer, respiratory failure, or other serious condition, so it is not clear if C. auris contributed to the deaths of four of them, the CDC said.

All patients had serious underlying medical conditions, including tumors, vascular disease and bone marrow transplants. The average time from hospital admission to isolation of C. auris was 18 days. Five patients with bloodstream infections had central venous catheters at the time C. auris was identified.

Weeks to months after the initial infection, patients had C. auris on their skin and other areas of the body; according to the CDC, this could present opportunities for contamination of the health care environment. Additionally, samples taken from multiple surfaces in one patient's hospital environment showed contamination of C. auris.