Rise Of The Fungus

Fungal infections often go undiagnosed. Even when identified, they are among the most difficult diseases to manage. They are now quietly spreading across the globe, preying on people’s weakened immune system and taking advantage of the high diabetes burden. Some are even showing resistance to the existing arsenal of drugs and are becoming virulent in a warming world

- TARAN DEOL

Sore throat, cough, hoarse voice, fatigue and difficulty swallowing—these seemingly ordinary symptoms can become debilitating and turn into a cause of worry if they persist for three months. Such was the case of an otherwise-healthy 61-year-old man from Kolkata, which had physicians scrambling for answers. Tests offered little insight into the cause of his disease. But a CT scan of his neck showed an abscess along the sides of the trachea or windpipe in the neck. Investigation of the abscess pus and dna examination of the pathogen showed an unusual suspect—Chondrostereum purpureum, a fungus that causes silver leaf disease in plants, especially species of roses, rhododendron, plums, apricots and cherries.

In plants, the infection spreads through airborne spores of the fungus, which enter through a cut in the branch and expand to the leaves, causing them to turn silver and eventually killing the plant. The patient in Kolkata, a plant mycologist, did not work with C purpureum, but had for a long time worked with decaying material, mushrooms and various plant fungi as part of his research activities. “Recurrent exposure to the decaying material may be the cause of this rare infection,” say Soma Dutta and Ujjwayini Ray, consultants at the Apollo Multispecialty Hospital, Kolkata, in a March 2023 report for the journal Medical Mycology Case Reports, adding that, “This is a first of its kind of a case wherein this plant fungus caused disease in a human.” While the patient has since recovered, Dutta and Ray warn that “such cross-kingdom human pathogens, and potential plant reservoirs, have important implications for emergence of infectious diseases.”