<story><title>Rise of Candida auris embodies a serious and growing public health threat</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xoa</author><text>This seems like it ties into an article from The Atlantic last year [1] on the under appreciated threat of increasing antifungal resistance. In particular, there are lots of antifungal agents out there that are fit for use on plants, but only a very small number triazole agents that are safe for humans. It should be completely illegal worldwide to use triazoles in anything except prescription treatments. This isn&amp;#x27;t even like antibiotics where there is necessarily overlap between mammalian usage in agriculture vs humans, there are non-triazole non-human safe agents that won&amp;#x27;t hurt plants one bit.&lt;p&gt;An important takeaway from that article was that it&amp;#x27;s not too late: agricultural azole usage is actually a fairly recent thing in much of the world and hasn&amp;#x27;t been in the US for example long. Quoting:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Until recently, the United States was exempt from concerns about azole-resistant Aspergillus. Azole use here has historically been low, a small percentage of what happens in Europe—though the numbers that record it, kept by the U.S. Geological Survey, may be incorrect because submitting them is voluntary. Nevertheless, tebuconazole use in the United States rose five times over from 1995 to 2015; the crops that accounted for the most use were wheat and corn. Meanwhile, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) poll of state health laboratories found no cases of resistance as recently as 2014. But last month, the CDC disclosed that 10 patients treated in the United States have been diagnosed with triazole-resistant Aspergillus bearing the mutations associated with agriculture. In a report in its weekly bulletin, the agency analyzed the records of seven of them. Four of them had never received azoles before they were diagnosed with the resistant strain. Three of the patients died.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s worth trying to stamp down on it legally ASAP. But it needs more public attention and political pressure, which makes this report that health authorities have been covering up the seriousness even worse.&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;when-tulips-kill&amp;#x2F;574489&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;when-tul...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Rise of Candida auris embodies a serious and growing public health threat</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>clord</author><text>It is so incredibly stupid on so many levels to be spraying antifungals into the environment. Not least because of the resistance problem. There are many ways that fungus interacts with plants and animals. Destabilizing the base of some critical food chain to get 10% better crop yields seems like a bad idea for us to do.</text></comment>