A newly
identified fungus that can kill very sick patients has been found in U.S.
hospitals and has probably been here for a few years, federal health officials
reported Friday.
It's infected at least 13 people, including
four who died.
The yeast is
called Candida auris and was first identified in 2009 in a Japanese patient
with an ear infection.
Since then, it's been found in a handful of
countries around the world. In June, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention asked doctors to look for it.
They found 13 cases over the summer, the CDC
reports.
Some strains of the fungus resist all the
classes of antifungal drugs used to fight it. The CDC described seven cases in
detail that could be treated with antifungals, although they all resisted at
least one class of the drugs.
"Five of seven isolates were resistant
to fluconazole; one of these isolates was resistant to amphotericin B, and
another isolate was resistant to echinocandins. No isolate was resistant to all
three classes of antifungal medications," the CDC team wrote in the report
released Friday.
"It appears
that C. auris arrived in the United States only in the past few years,"
said Dr. Tom Chiller, who heads the CDC branch that deals with fungal diseases.
"We're working hard with partners to
better understand this fungus and how it spreads so we can improve infection
control recommendations and help protect people."
All of the patients described in the CDC
report were already very sick. One is a paraplegic patient in Illinois whose
catheter was infected and who remained infected even after treatment.
Four patients in New York, New Jersey and
Maryland died, although the CDC team says it's not clear if the fungal
infection played a role. One had a brain tumor, two had blood cancers and one
had respiratory failure.
The fungus can be found throughout the body
and on the skin, the CDC said.
"Five
patients had C. auris initially isolated from blood, one from urine, and one
from the external ear canal," the team wrote in the report.
In some cases, the infections appeared
related — some of the patients had been in the same hospital together or one
right after another, and genetic sequencing showed the Candida strains were
close.
The strain found in the four patients who
died was related to a strain seen in South Asia, the CDC said.
"Isolates from the two Illinois patients
were nearly identical and were most closely related to isolates from South
America," the team wrote.
Swabs of the hospital room of one patient
found the fungus in the mattress, bedside table, bed rail, chair, and window
sill. But bleach killed it. "C. auris was not detected in this patient's
hospital room after terminal cleaning with sodium hypochlorite solution and
ultraviolet light," the CDC wrote.
The CDC recommends thoroughly cleaning the
hospital rooms where the fungus is found, and warning facilities if a patient
being transferred has been infected.
"We need to act now to better
understand, contain and stop the spread of this drug-resistant fungus,"
said CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden. "This is an emerging threat, and we
need to protect vulnerable patients and others.
Source:
nbcnews.com
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