A deadly fungus previously known only to infect plants has been discovered in at least one human.
Medical personnel at the Consultant Apollo Multispecialty Hospitals in India have documented the first infection of plant fungus in a person in a recently released case report. Officials determined that the fungus in this infection was Chondrostereum purpureum, which typically causes silver leaf disease in plants and is spread primarily through airborne spores.
In the scientific journal Medical Mycology Case Reports, medical professionals explained that a 61-year-old male in India had visited a clinic with hoarseness, difficulty swallowing, a recurring cough, a sore throat, anorexia, and fatigue that had lasted for three months.
A CT scan revealed an abscess in the man’s throat that doctors treated by draining it and administering oral antifungal medication. Medical professionals sent the extracted fluid to the World Health Organization for testing, which identified the presence of Chondrostereum purpureum.
The patient, who had no significant prior medical history, was a plant mycologist who had extended exposure to plant fungi, mushrooms, and decaying material. Researchers concluded this was how he was exposed.
The man had been free from the disease for two years when the report was written.
Strain HQ1 of this fungus is used in herbicides and is painted on cut tree stumps to prevent regrowth. A document released in 2004 by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that the fungus demonstrated “no toxicity or pathogenicity to humans, wildlife, or the environment.”
The new revelation that the fungus has infected a human suggests it has evolved due to natural selection-adaptation.
Researchers wrote that there might be a connection between the increased possibility of fungi infections jumping species and humans’ effect on the environment, such as urbanization and changing ecosystems.
“The worsening of global warming and other civilization activities,” researchers said in the study, “opens Pandora’s Box for newer fungal diseases.”
Very few of the millions of fungi in the world satisfy the four requirements for human or animal infection. According to the case report, those are: a way to invade a human body, the ability to survive at human body temperature, resistance to a human immune system, and the ability to break down human cells and absorb human tissue.