Fungi not so fun guys any more

If you've seen or played The Last of Us, the post-apocalyptic survival horror game/show, you'll be familiar with the idea that fungal infection might be a bad thing. Now, just in case you were filing this away as purely fictional, you'll be delighted to learn that a study from a team in China has not only reported the first cases of a new human fungal infection, but also determined that the organism is already resistant to common antifungal drugs.

And if that wasn't enough, culturing the fungus at the relatively high mammalian body temperature encourages more mutations, and rapidly led to additional drug resistance.

As the study notes, this is not encouraging news when read against the context of rising global temperatures.

Anti-microbial resistance is already a major health concern; to which we now need to add the possibility of emerging pathogenic fungi. A further issue is that - given the greater biological similarity between fungi and humans compared to bacteria and humans - many potential antifungal agents can cause severe side effects in patients.