As the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, scientists have discovered a deadly fungus in the Andaman islands that they say could lead to the next pandemic. Researchers found traces of a “superbug” called Candida auris or C. auris from two sites on islands.
The fungus, researchers said, sprung up from nowhere and has been found in nature for the first time. The study was published in the journal mBio on Tuesday.
C. auris has been found to be resistant to many antifungal drugs and for this reason, it is highly dangerous, scientists revealed. They further said that it emerged as a human pathogen on three continents in the early 2010s. The yeast has since been named a public health threat for its ability to cause dangerous, sometimes fatal infections.
A team led by Dr Anuradha Chowdhary of Delhi University studied 48 samples of soil and water which were collected from eight natural sites around the Andaman islands. C. auris was them isolated from two sites―a salt marsh wetland seldom visited by people and a beach with more human activity.
“It was found the C. auris isolates from the beach were all multi-drug resistant and were more closely related to strains seen in hospitals compared with the isolates found in the marsh,” Live Science quoted Chowdhary as saying in a statement.
The C. auris isolated from the salt marsh grew at a slower pace at high temperatures in contrast with the other isolates. This suggested that the isolate could potentially be a “wilder” strain of the ‘superbug’.
Dr Arturo Casadevall, chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore revealed that the isolate might be one that is yet to adapt to the body temperatures of humans and animals.
However, the study was not able to prove that the ‘superbug’ lived naturally on the islands or that it had originated from there. It is possible that the ‘superbug’ could have been transferred on the islands by people especially at the beach site since there is regular human activity here.
“C. auris survives on the skin before entering the body through wounds. Once in the bloodstream, it causes severe illness and can lead to sepsis―a condition that kills up to 11 million people a year globally,” the World Health Organisation said about the ‘superbug’.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that the ‘superbug’ can cause serious bloodstream infections. It added that the ‘superbug’ can especially infect people who require catheters, feeding tubes or breathing tubes.
“This infection can be difficult to treat because the microbe is often resistant to multiple antifungal drugs; and it can also linger on environmental surfaces,” Live Science reported.
