A fungus appears in hospitals on different continents. You assume it started somewhere and spread. Then scientists sequence it and discover that the story is much stranger.
This week on Infectious Dose, we're exploring the strange emergence of Candida auris, now taxonomically known as Candidozyma auris. We trace the organism from its description in Japan to the discovery of genetically distinct lineages emerging in different parts of the world, and ask a question scientists still haven't completely answered: why did this fungus seemingly become a human pathogen in several places within such a short period of time?
Along the way, we'll explore why C. auris is so well-suited to healthcare environments, how people can carry it without becoming sick, why it can persist on surfaces and resist ordinary infection-control measures, and what happens when it also becomes resistant to the limited antifungal drugs available to treat invasive infections. And ahead of Fungal Disease Awareness Week, we'll look at the larger lesson of the C. auris story: fungi deserve a much bigger place in how we think about emerging infectious disease.
Full annotated citations and additional resources for this episode are available in the companion blog post at InfectiousDose.com.
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