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Science

Fungal Disease Spiked During Covid Pandemic and Pathogens Spreading Due To Climate Crisis, WHO Says (theguardian.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
Health-threatening fungi are spreading in geographic range due to climate change, while some fungal diseases spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to authors of a newly released World Health Organization report. From a report: On Tuesday the WHO published its first ever list of fungal priority pathogens, cataloguing 19 organisms that experts identified as being of the greatest threat to public health. "Currently, fungal infections receive less than 1.5% of all infectious disease research funding," the report found, suggesting the true health burden of fungi is unknown, while "most treatment guidelines are informed by limited evidence and expert opinion."

The WHO's assistant director general of antimicrobial resistance, Dr Hanan Balkhy, said in a statement: "Emerging from the shadows of the bacterial antimicrobial resistance pandemic, invasive fungal diseases are growing ever more resistant to treatments, becoming an ever more pressing public health concern worldwide." Dr Justin Beardsley, of the University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, who led a group commissioned by the WHO, said historical research underspending was out of step with the "huge burden of disease" of fungal infections. "They're causing as many deaths as tuberculosis, and more than malaria," he said.
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Fungal Disease Spiked During Covid Pandemic and Pathogens Spreading Due To Climate Crisis, WHO Says More

Fungal Disease Spiked During Covid Pandemic and Pathogens Spreading Due To Climate Crisis, WHO Says

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  • fungal diseases are hard to treat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cats-paw ( 34890 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @02:53PM (#62997409) Homepage

    According to a Science Friday interview with Mycologists that I listened to, they are close to mammalian cells , so medications that might hurt them might hurt you too, ergo can be very hard to treat. A friend of mine and I used to wonder why your lungs didn't constantly get fungal infections. The answer, as it often is, is your immune system. It turns out HIV patients will have a lot of trouble with fungal infections.

    Here's something for you to have nightmares about.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

    Was it related to global warming ? Not known at this point, but it could definitely be a harbinger of things to come.

    • Yup I just finished a "pulse" of Sporonox / Itraconazole. IT WAS BRUTAL. Vomiting in the mornins, diarrhea all day, brain fog, extreme fatigue and for some reason no ability to focus and be productive (felt like no motivation) at work and I love what I do usually. Really debating even doing the next 2 rounds of a week each. The side effects are far from "mild" as my doctor put it

      • Oof! Itraconazole is pretty hard stuff. If you're on that, you probably have something rather serious you're treating.

        Given that, I bid you good luck with the rest of your treatment!

  • So I did some numbers. TB kills about 1.5 mil. Malaria about 650K. Globally about 17 mil die to infections. So proportioning research for fungal vs. non-fingal should be able 1.5/17, or about 9%, vs. the claim that it is only 1.5%.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dskoll ( 99328 )

      TB is not a fungal disease. It's caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which despite having "Myco-" in its name is not a fungus.

  • WFH should be "Work From Hawaii" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think I picked one up during the pandemic (blood test confirmed it). I suspect it was from 2 years in a basement work office, too little exercise and an unusually sub-par diet. And from what I read, exposure to mold makes getting a fungus more likely for some reason.

  • It is difficult to treat fungal infections without side effects, because they are eukaryotes. Basically, God doesn't want us to kill fungi because humans and fungi evolved from the same common ancestor. They are our cousins. Do you know what that means?? Anything that kills fungi also kills humans. For example, to kill bacteria you can target ribosomal subunits, such as for example subunit 30S. You aren't allowed to do that with fungi, because Jesus protected the fungi by making fungi and humans have simila

    • We don't need no medication
      We don't need no Clioquinol
      No more messing with ribosomes
      Doctors leave them shrooms alone
      Hey! Doctors! Leave them shrooms alone!
      All in all it's just some fungi in the soil
      All in all we're just more fungi in the soil

  • The problem is when you blame everything and their cat and dog on worsening climate change (incorrectly) people's brains have already shut off. It has become a political agenda versus a scientific one. When it really needs to remain in the realm of science.

    The other problem is the people who want to fix climate change were the ones who were in charge of Covid response. I'm quite sure there are valid questions on how that went. There are those that think the cures were worse than the disease in many respects

    • Slashdot newsletter popups are caused by climate change.

      Do you WANT those popups? How could you?

    • The last 75 years have been a bit of a golden age for stupidity. Very few serious consequences for being a moron, willful or otherwise. That’s changing. The next century is already showing major upticks in infections, climate disasters, war, and various other things that tend to hit the stupid people square in the face. It might even be enough to create some evolutionary pressure.

    • Yup. When I see a single article that contains WHO, Covid Pandemic, and Climate Crisis all in one, I know it's all about global elites pushing an agenda that is not in my best interests, as opposed to raising awareness of genuine health concerns.

  • If only there was a low cost safe & proven anti-fungal treatment on the market.

    We have been told by "The Science" that anti-fungals are horse paste.

  • Neutrophil extracellular traps, vitamin c, netosis, mouse stress
    https://youtu.be/DOXTxpEZ_yw?t... [youtu.be]
    https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643... [mdpi.com]
    "Neutrophils are the body’s primary defenders against invading pathogens. (...) Neutrophils contain high concentrations of vitamin C (ascorbate) and this is thought to be essential for their function"
    Neutrophils live about 4-5 days and come from bone marrow. A EBV infected neutrophil dies after 24hr, depleting the body of essential precursor stem cells.

    • vitamin c lowered the neutrophil intentional suicide (netosis, neutrophil extracellular trap), and controlled the damage

      • "Human skeletal muscle is highly responsive to vitamin C intake and plasma concentrations and exhibits a greater relative uptake of ascorbate than leukocytes. Thus, muscle appears to comprise a relatively labile pool of ascorbate and is likely to be prone to ascorbate depletion with inadequate dietary intake. "

        slightly unrelated...
        "Vitamin C and vitamin E antagonistically modulate human vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cell DNA synthesis and proliferation"

        Don't forget a multivitamin

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