Pesticides Are Creating Deadly Drug-Resistant Fungi

A terrifying new threat has emerged in the form of drug-resistant fungus, and the use of pesticides in agriculture seems to be exacerbating the problem.

To get this out of the way, no, this fungus is not turning its victims into zombies like in the hit show The Last of Us. However, fungal infections are a deadly serious problem. More than 300 million people contract fungal illnesses every year and 1.5 million people are killed by them. That’s about as many deaths as from malaria or tuberculosis, two of the most deadly illnesses in the world.

How This Problem Was Discovered

Dr. Paul Verweij, an intensive care doctor in the Netherlands, identified the cause of previously unexplained serious illness and death in his unit. He discovered that the fungus Aspergillus Fumigatus was the culprit.

When treating the patients he found that the fungus was unusually drug-resistant. Like bacteria, fungus can adapt to their environment, building resistance to drugs that would normally kill them.

Aspergillus is usually easily treated with a class of drugs called azoles but this particular strain was incredibly resistant to them. This was odd because none of the patients had been treated with azoles in the past, which is a common way for drug-resistance to proliferate.

Dr. Verweij soon discovered that this new drug-resistant strain was not contained to his hospital. He found similar cases of drug-resistant fungal infections killing patients at alarming rates across the Netherlands.

This narrowed the problem down to a larger environmental issue and scientists eventually found that the fungus was likely gaining its drug-resistance from exposure to a pesticide based on azole drugs.

Which Takes Precedence: Medicine or Pesticides?

Experts are now sounding the alarm about a new fungus-killing pesticide, called ipflufenoquin. It shares a mechanism of action (how it kills fungus) with Olorofim, a drug in clinical trials that could fill a major gap in treatment options for Aspergillus infections as well as valley fever.

If ipflufenoquin is introduced, it could start to breed fungus resistant to its mechanism of action. This could also make it resistant to Olorofim, making the drug much less useful if not entirely useless.

There is a difficult ethical question at heart here. Which takes precedence: medicine or pesticides?

Both medicines and pesticides are absolutely essential for improving and sustaining life, but in different ways. An effective pesticide could save thousands of lives if not more by protecting the food supply. An effective medicine could save just as many lives or more by directly treating deadly fungal infections.

In this specific case, most experts agree that the medicine is more important. This is because there are shockingly few effective anti-fungal treatments available for doctors.

In fact, the FDA hasn’t approved a drug to treat invasive fungal infections in over 20 years. If the effectiveness of Olorofim is dulled by this new pesticide, it could be devastating for thousands of patients suffering from Aspergillus infections.

So far, no public health agency has been worried enough about this problem to step in, but that may change.

Related Articlce:

AI Fever Catches Up with Slack as It Plans a Chatbot to Enhance User Experience

Best Ethereum Wallets for 2023