A 61-year-old man turned out to be the world's first person to catch a plant fungal disease, raising worries about the threat they represent as a result of climate change and resistance to conventional treatments, a UK based news organisation Telegraph reported.
The anonymous guy, a plant mycologist, went to hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata after three months of hoarseness, coughing, exhaustion, and swallowing difficulties.
The guy had a paratracheal abscess on his neck, and when pus samples were tested, it was discovered that he had been infected with Chondrostereum purpureum, the same fungus that causes silver leaf disease in plants.
The illness comes after the TV programme 'The Last of Us,' which is based on a real-life pathogen that transforms ants into 'zombies' and can wipe out whole colonies, heightened public awareness of fungal infections.
In this example, the 61-year-old recovered completely following two months of treatment with two antifungal drugs. Yet, the illness has frightened public health officials because it was previously unknown that fungal spores in plants could infect humans.
It is suspected that the guy came into touch with the fungus while conducting research for his employment, which required him to work with decaying plants and mushrooms for an extended length of time.
“There are literally hundreds of millions of fungal species and only a fraction that cause infections in humans but we are starting to see this strange phenomena of fungal infections that were not known to cause infections in humans, now causing infections,” Ramanan Laxminarayan, the Founder and President of the One Health Trust, was quoted by Telegraph in its report.
“Obviously it is of concern about where the next pandemic is coming from and it could be caused by a fungal pathogen. But, thankfully, at the moment we don’t have very effective transmission from person to person,” he further stated.