A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe
in a Climate of Secrecy
“There are
different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch
researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks
to heavy use of fungicides on crops.
Dr. Meis became
intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old
patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus.
It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole.
That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops
the world over and account for more than one-third of all fungicide sales….
This is similar to
concerns that resistant bacteria are growing because of excessive use of
antibiotics in livestock for health and growth promotion. As with antibiotics
in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops.”