CNN — A new superbug threat is spreading around the world.
The culprit: microscopic fungal spores that live in and on human bodies and in the dirt and air.
Torrence Irvin believes the life-threatening fungi called Coccidioides entered his lungs in June 2018 while he was relaxing in his backyard in Patterson, California.
“I was sitting in my lounger enjoying a nice summer day, playing games on my phone and having a cocktail,” said Irvin, who came close to death before a specialist correctly diagnosed his infection nearly a year later.
“I went from a 290-pound man to 150-pound skeleton,” he said. “It came to the point where my first doctors just tossed up their hands and told my wife there’s nothing we can do. I still remember how my wife sobbed when they told her that.”
Torrence Irvin (left) and his wife, Rhonda Smith-Irvin, pose for a photograph before a deadly fungi infected his lungs. Ray Sheard Jr.
Like Irvin, Rob Purdie thinks he was outside his Bakersfield, California home, working in his garden, when he inhaled Coccidioides spores in 2012.
The infection soon spread to his brain, causing fungal meningitis. The condition is marked by potentially deadly inflammation of the protective membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
“In about 3% of people that are infected, the fungus goes somewhere else in the body, beyond the lungs to your skin, bone and joints, and other organs, or weird places like your eyeball, tooth and pinkie finger,” said Purdie, a founding member of the nonprofit MYCare, or MYcology Advocacy, Research & Education, which educates and promotes research in the field of fungal diseases.
“Half the time it goes to the brain, like mine,” Purdie said. “To control my disease for the rest of my life, I have to take intracranial injections with a toxic 80-year-old drug that is slowly poisoning me.”
Coccidioides is a genus of fungi found in the soil of dry, low rainfall areas. It is endemic (native and common) in many areas of the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America. Coccidioidomycosis, also known as Valley Fever, is a common cause of pneumonia in endemic areas.
At least 30% – 60% of people who live in an endemic region are exposed to the fungus at some point during their lives. In most people the infection will go away on its own, but for people who develop severe infections or chronic pneumonia, medical treatment is necessary. Certain groups of people are at higher risk of developing severe disease.
It is difficult to avoid exposure to Coccidioides, but people who are at higher risk should try to avoid breathing in large amounts of dust if they are in endemic areas. – CDC
