Fungus From Pacific Northwest Not So Dangerous

Fungus From Pacific Northwest Not So Dangerous.
The original "killer" fungus spreading through the is participation reality but also part hype, experts say. "It's positively real in that we've been seeing this fungus in North America since 1999 and it's causing a lot more meningitis than you would envision in the general population, but this is still a rare disease," said Christina Hull, an auxiliary professor of medical microbiology and immunology and of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. Cryptococcus gattii, historically a abiding of more tropical climates, was in the first place discovered in North America on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1999 and has since made its speed to Washington state and now, more recently, to Oregon.

So "It's a strain that appears to have come from Australia at some details and has adapted to living somewhere cooler than usual". From the point of view of sheer numbers, the creative C gattii hardly seems alarming. It infected 218 people on Vancouver Island, bomb close to 9 percent of those infected.

In the United States, the death speed has been higher but, again, few people have been infected. "At its peak, we were seeing about 36 cases per million per year, so that is a very miserly number". Michael Horseman, an associate professor of druggist's practice at Texas A&M Health Science Center Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy in Kingsville, puts the overall annihilation rate in the "upper single digits to the put down teens. It's not quite what I've been reading in the newspapers".

Experts had been concerned because the new fungus seems to have some remarkable characteristics, different from those seen in other locales. For one thing, the North American C gattii seemed to be attacking otherwise hale people, not those with compromised immune systems, as was the case in the past. But closer inspection reveals that not all shape individuals are vulnerable.