Antifungal resistance is growing, potentially leading to more disease and food shortages, notes research

As resistance to antifungal drugs is growing, new research funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) has revealed that this could lead to a rise in disease outbreaks and global food shortages.

The research, led by teams at Imperial College London and the University of Exeter, has revealed that the rise in resistance to antifungal treatments mirrors that of the rising levels of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, leading them to warn that improvements in how existing drugs are used is necessary. Additionally, there has been a call for an increased focus on the discovery of new treatments so that a ‘global collapse’ in the ability to control and fight fungal infections can be avoided.

“The threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is well established in bacteria, but has largely been neglected in fungi,” said Professor Matthew Fisher, of the School of Public Health at Imperial and first author of the study. “The scale of the problem has been, until now, under-recognised and under-appreciated, but the threat to human health and the food chain are serious and immediate.

“Fungi are a growing threat to human and crop health as new species and variants spread around the world, so it is essential that we have means to combat them. However, the very limited number of antifungal drugs means that the emergence of resistance is leading to many common fungal infections becoming incurable.”

Fungal pathogens cause a multitude of infections that affect humans, animals and plants with common infections including blights, yeast and mould-related infections. Many of the current drugs used to treat these infections in plants and animals are in danger of becoming ineffective and there are fears that this may happen to the treatments used in humans.

“Invasive fungal infections primarily occur in individuals with altered immune function, and there has been a huge increase in these infections over the last few decades as a result of modern medical interventions and HIV/AIDS,” explained Professor Gordon Brown, director of the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Aberdeen. “These infections have some of the highest mortality rates of any infectious disease, often exceeding 50%.

“This review highlights the huge increase in resistance to many of these drugs around the world, driven in part through commercial use in agriculture. Given the high rates of mortality of these infections, these disturbing trends suggest that even our limited ability to treat these diseases is being severely compromised. We are also seeing the rise of new multidrug resistant fungal pathogens such as Candida auris, for which there are limited therapeutic options.”

The results of this research have been published in the journal Science.