Where all your ID needs are met! Sort of.
Candida and staphylococcus are two fairly common isolates of bloodstream infections, as well as part of our own microbiome. These two organisms also instill the fear of God into me, given how sticky they can be. I’ve talked a lot about staphylococcus and endocarditis in general, so candida endocarditis gets the spotlight for this post.
Echinocandins. This is the drug we use mostly on the inpatient side for invasive candidiasis. The most well known is micafungin, but analdafungin is another option that is also commonly used. Besides resistance, the issue with echinocandins are the fact they are intravenous drugs, which makes administration of it easy on the inpatient side but
Coccidioides (from now on, called Cocci) is an endemic fungi that exists in two forms, yeast and mold, that is endemic to the southeastern United States (1). It is related to both Histoplasma and Blastomyces with two species known to infect humans. C. immitis and C. posadasii. Arthroconidia can be transported in soil or fomites,
Ear yeast! That is the translation of Candida auris. It was discovered by isolation from an ear infection in an elderly patient in Japan in 2009 and since then it has been isolated in places such as India, southeast Asia and several parts of south America (1-4): One of the defining characteristics is its resistance
Consider this post a continuation of the prior one on prophylaxis. I mention a bit on the pathophysiology, where adaptive immunity seems to play a key role in the way the body deals with the fungus, with mice with SCID infected with pneumocystis not being able to mount an inflammatory response. As a result of
First identified by Carlos Chagas (yes, that Chagas) back in 1909, pneumocystis was identified as a cause of plasma cell pneumonia in debilitated infants following WWII (1). Since then, it has been identified as a unicellular fungus that is of low virulence and unique amongst the other fungi in that it lacks ergosterol in its
When I say bat poop, caves, and Indiana, the answer is Histoplasmosis. In general, most people will not get disease even when inhaling any conidia, however those who have decreased cellular immunity (i.e. solid organ transplant and HIV) are at risk of pulmonary or disseminated disease. One of the difficult issues in those patients is
Last week I talked about invasive pulmonary aspergillosis in influenza and COVID patients. This is not the first time I have talked about this topic. I have mentioned how the halo sign is not terribly specific for IPA, especially in hematological patients and the testing characteristics of galactomannan. I have also spoken about the other
Influenza season is right around the corner, and given the current circumstances, it is a terrifying thought to have both COVID and flu running around. Besides causing significant respiratory distress and subsequent ARDS, severe influenza leads to bacterial superinfection with organisms such as Staph aureus and Streptococcal pneumonia. This usually happens in 10-35% of cases
I’ve been reading quite a bit about antifungals lately and one of the things I realized is the many formulations of amphotericin. Actually, the realization I had was I didn’t know the differences between them. It is a polyene antifungal that has broad spectrum antifungal activity (including Leshmania spp) but it is limited by its
Dr. Germophile 