A drug-resistant and potentially deadly fungus called Candida auris, or C. auris, has been rapidly spreading through U.S. healthcare facilities.
New data published on March 21 in the Annals of Internal Medicine by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed the annual rate of clinical cases went from a 44% increase in 2019 to an alarming jump of 95% in 2021.
C. auris is a type of yeast that is capable of causing severe illness in individuals with weakened immune systems. The infections it causes as it enters the bloodstream can become invasive, spreading throughout the body to the eyes, brain, blood, and heart.
While first identified in 2009 in a Japanese patient with an ear infection, it didn’t appear in the U.S. until 2013. In fact, for reasons still unknown, four different strains of C. auris emerged around the same time in different parts of the globe, per the CDC. Each demonstrates a different level of resistance to the three different classes of antifungal drugs available for treatment.
Although there is not enough data to determine a clear fatality rate for C. auris infections, the CDC estimated that 30% to 60% of clinical cases have been lethal.
Still, Dr. Waleed Javaid told NBC News that health officials “don’t want people who watched ‘The Last of Us’ to think we’re all going to die,” referencing a new popular dystopian TV series featuring a predatory fungus.
Javaid, the director of infection prevention and control at New York’s Mount Sinai Downtown, explained that C. auris typically affects people who are already quite ill. As such, it does not present many risks to healthy individuals.
At the same time, C. auris demonstrates “an extreme ability to survive on surfaces,” Javaid told NBC News. “It can colonize walls, cables, bedding, chairs. We clean everything with bleach and UV light.”
For this reason, the primary concern is preventing the fungus from spreading to patients in intensive care units. C. auris can colonize not only individuals who come into contact with the fungus but also the surrounding patient rooms.
It is this ability to spread that has health officials most alarmed.
Dr. Meghan Lyman, chief medical officer of the Mycotic Diseases Branch of the CDC, told NBC News, “We’ve seen increases not just in areas of ongoing transmission, but also in new areas.”
Currently, the fungus has been identified in over half of the states in the country.
In Texas, there were 160 patients infected with the fungus in 2022, according to tracking data from the CDC. This is one of the highest concentrations by state, although California, New York, Nevada, Florida, and Illinois show nearly double these numbers.
The CDC has published its report on C. auris in hopes that healthcare providers will be more vigilant in detecting outbreaks — the fungus is easy to misidentify using standard laboratory methods — and containing them.
“It’s not unusual to see MRSA [staph infection, a superbug] in the community now,” Dr. Graham Snyder, medical director of infection prevention at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told NBC News. “Will that happen with C. auris? I don’t know. That’s partly why the CDC is raising the alarm.”
