Fungal Disease Awareness Week Highlights Antifungal Advances and Resources

Fungal Disease Awareness Week is celebrated from September 16 to 24, 2024, and to discuss fungal infections, Infection Control Today^® (ICT®) spoke with Matthew Pullen, infectious disease physician and assistant professor of infectious diseases and international medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He is also a member of ICT’s Editorial Advisory Board.

During the conversation, Pullen discusses the treatment of fungal diseases and antifungals, One Health, neglected tropical fungal diseases, fungal pneumonias, and, finally, what the future of fungal diseases could be.

He also discusses his recent trip to the Mycoses Study Group Education & Research Consortium (MSGERC), which was held in Colorado Springs from September 4 to 6, 2024.

“The Mycoses Study group is a cool, high-functioning group of clinicians, researchers, residents, and fellows in the medical community whose main focus is fungal disease,” Pullen told ICT. “Every 2 years, they have a big conference where we talk about advances in clinical trials, advances in new antifungal medications, hot topics that will be coming up in the next couple of years.”

Pullen also spoke about the app he created for the Mycosis Study Group, which he presented at the consortium. This is only the latest app he has created to help research infectious diseases. This will be a wonderful resource for everyone worldwide.

“The Mycosis study group has a website called Doctor Fungus. It's freely available to everyone, and they envisioned it as the go-to resource for clinical fungal disease. You can find all kinds of good information about fungal infections, treatments for those infections, diagnostic techniques for different infections,” Pullen said. “I modeled this app on things like the Johns Hopkins antibiotic guide. It's a high-yield resource you can keep on your phone and use day-to-day in the hospital. So, I have taken a lot of the information from Dr fungus and turned it into the Doctor Fungus app. We will also use it to connect clinicians out in the field to clinical trials that are recruiting.”

The conversation carried over to antifungals, and Pullen discussed the study he has recently launched to learn more about how successful antifungal treatment is and how often it is being used instead of the “old boilerplate medications.”

“[The study is] called the Prospective Nationwide Study of Endemic Mycosis. It's an online recruitment study nationwide. Anyone who's had any of those 3 infections in the last three months can join. Essentially, it's an online survey they fill out that goes over when they were diagnosed, what sort of symptoms they had when they were diagnosed, what treatment they were given, what treatment they're on now, and then a few questions about risk factors for disease. Then, every month, they'll get a much shorter survey that will query them about, you know, how you've been doing on your antifungal medication. Have you had to switch? And if you have had to switch, why was it side effects? Was it a worsening infection? The goal is that over the next few years, we'll get a lot of real-world data on antifungals and be able to answer a lot of the questions that doctors and patients have about antifungals.

“So, if anyone watching this has antifungal patients, or if they are an antifungal patient, Fungal study.org where you can go to get more information.

Some of the fungal diseases are

·Candidiasis: A yeast infection caused by an overgrowth of Candida, a type of yeast normally present in the body.

·Ringworm: A common fungal infection, often including athlete's foot, that affects the skin.

·Fungal Nail Infections: A widespread fungal condition that impacts around 14% of the population.

·Aspergillosis: A lung infection typically affecting individuals with weakened immune systems.

·Blastomycosis: A lung infection caused by a fungus found in soil in certain regions of the U.S.

·Cryptococcosis: A fungal infection that predominantly targets the lungs or brain.

·Histoplasmosis: A lung infection caused by a fungus found in soil, bird droppings, and bat droppings, especially in some U.S. regions.

·Mucormycosis: A severe lung infection mainly affecting people with compromised immune systems.

·Fungal Keratitis: A severe eye infection that can threaten vision, sometimes resulting in eye loss.

(Quotes have been edited for clarity.)