The fungal threat to human health is growing in a warmer, wetter, sicker world – By Jen Christensen (CNN) / Feb 7, 2023
CNN — In the HBO show “The Last of Us,” characters identify zombies among them by the fungi that bursts from their bodies, and fungal parasites manipulate the humans to infect the communities around them.
In real life, the fungal species that inspired the story, Ophiocordyceps, infects insects and does not cause problems for people. HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.
However, the threat from fungal pathogens is increasing, experts say, and may grow much worse in a warmer, wetter and sicker world.
“We’re always surrounded by fungal spores. We’ve lived with them ever since we made beds in the Savanna 500,000 years ago, before we even evolved into modern humans. And we’ve had to adapt this exquisite immune system that we have to defend against spores, because many of them are potentially pathogenic,” said Dr. Matthew Fisher, a professor of medicine in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London whose research focuses on emerging pathogenic fungi.
CONTINUE > https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/health/fungus-health-threat-scn/index.html
