In any given year, roughly two million U.S. residents contract an antibiotic-resistant infection — and 23,000 of those individuals die. This public health crisis will likely get worse, given the overuse of antibiotics in the cows and chickens that end up on our dinner tables.
But antibiotic resistance is not the only looming public health threat in the world of infections. Antifungal resistance rightfully deserves its own spotlight — not least because fungal infections account for
25 percent of all infections that attack bodily surfaces. These aggravations might seem harmless, presenting as mere nuisances like unsightly rashes, nail discoloration, and itching. But like the bacterial infections being treated with increasingly less effective antibiotics, not all fungi are created equal.
Superbugs and superinfections — once the stuff of myth and science fiction — have now become conceivable realities.
Fungi are relatively picky and behave like bullies, often targeting people they perceive as weak and defenseless. People who are immunocompromised, or have weakened immune systems (e.g., people who have cancer or HIV, use biologics, have been taking corticosteroids for long periods, or are elderly —at a time when
people over 80 are the fastest growing age group in the world) are at greater risk for fungal infections.
But just because fungi frequently profile people with weakened immune systems does not mean healthy human beings should underestimate their impacts.
