The death of a Michigan chef from a fungal infection has shed light on a silent epidemic that has been growing in America for years.
Four deadly types in particular have become increasingly common in recent decades: infect thousands of people now compared to just dozens in the early 2000s.
DailyMail.com earlier this week revealed the latest victim of the outbreak, 29-year-old Ian Pritchard, 29, whose lungs were ‘destroyed’ by blastomycosis – a microscopic yeast that spreads when people inhale its spores.
The fungus lurks in wet soil and rotting wood in the upper Midwest, but warming global climates are allowing it to flourish on the East Coast as well.
Meanwhile, in the West, Valley Fever is sickening more people than ever, with cases in California tripling between 2014 and 2018 and between 2018 and 2022.
Since reporting on Ian Pritchard’s death, DailyMail.com has heard from several others whose loved ones or themselves have fallen victim to potentially fatal fungal infections.
Blastomycosis typically arises from exposure to wet environments, primarily in the upper Midwest. But epidemiological studies are increasingly finding the fungus on the East Coast
The fungus that causes valley fever thrives in warm, dry environments
Ian Pritchard was in a medically induced coma in a Detroit hospital before he died this weekend. Doctors were unable to eradicate the fungal infection, forcing Ian to undergo a life-saving lung transplant
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the World Health Organization, have raised alarms in recent years about fungal pathogens that can evade medications.
Climate change combined with international travel is facilitating the spread of potentially dangerous pathogens, including fungal species.
An approximate one 7,199 deaths from fungal diseases took place in 2021, according to the CDC. That’s an increase from a total of 5,922 deaths the year before, and 4,833 deaths the year before that.
Ian Pritchard’s case of blastomycosis was one of the first reported in the US in 2024. His cousin, Lorelei Walker, shared the extent of her loss to DailyMail.com. Ian was the second member of her family to be broken by this disease.
She told DailyMail.com: ‘Ian is the second in my family to succumb to this disease. If I hadn’t experienced it with my husband, I would never have known what this disease is and the damage it causes – not only to the person fighting it, but to the families and friends watching.”
Fungi, which lurk in wet soil, leaves and rotting wood, when disturbed release spores into the air, which can become embedded in tissue and cause infections. For example, the fungus that causes blastomycosis turns itself into a type of yeast that multiplies in the lungs and causes an infection.
To this day, Mrs Walker does not know how her husband Ira – who had an underlying kidney disease – became infected in June 2020. At the height of the global Covid pandemic, Ira was rushed to hospital from his dialysis session in an ambulance in June 2020. after weeks of difficult breathing, fatigue and muscle pain.
An X-ray revealed opaque masses on his lungs that indicated to doctors that he had pneumonia, although his condition was not improved by standard treatment for the lung infection.
He was admitted to hospital and subsequent tests confirmed blastomycosis.
Diagnosing blastomycosis requires chest X-rays or CT scans to detect lung masses or cavities. Doctors also typically take fluid or tissue samples to test for signs of yeast cells that Blastomyces turn into when they enter the lungs.
Ira Walker, pictured left, succumbed to blastomycosis in 2020. His wife Lorelei, pictured right, told DailyMail.com she still doesn’t know how he became ill.
Ira’s immune system was not strong at first. He had been on dialysis when he was rushed to hospital and was eventually diagnosed with blastomycosis
Ira languished in a hospital for a month after doctors surgically created an opening through his neck to his windpipe, before being transferred to a specialist facility for a higher level of care. Although the hope was that he would regain lost strength and muscle mass, his situation only got worse.
She told DailyMail.com: ‘Instead of regaining strength, he became weaker. Every time the hospital called, there was news of yet another setback.
“At the end of September, I received a call from his sister telling me he had made the decision to come home for hospice care.
‘She put the phone to his ear so I could talk to him to confirm. A few days later I spoke to his case manager and arranged for him to come home.’
Studies have shown that an increasingly warm climate is creating exceptionally hospitable environments for many species of the most sinister fungi and can even help them mutate to the point where they cannot be treated with standard medications.
The fungus that causes valley fever, coccidioides, thrives in hot desert environments and is becoming increasingly hotter and drier. And another, Histoplasma, which causes histoplasmosis, thrives in wet soil on the East Coast, where rain only increases as the years pass.
In a changing environment where fungi can thrive and continually adapt, there is concern that the current arsenal of antifungal treatments will fail, leaving healthcare workers with an escalating crisis of untreatable pathogens.
Neither Mrs. Walker nor the Pritchard family can say where their loved ones were exposed, but it could have been anywhere outside as Blastomyces thrive in wet soil and moist environments.
The Midwest has gotten warmer and the storms are becoming more intense. Since 1900, annual precipitation has increased by as much as 20 percent in some areas of the region.
Average winter temperatures in the US have risen by almost three degrees, and spring temperatures have risen by about two degrees. With milder climates comes a longer growing season for fungi, allowing them to thrive longer and reproduce more widely.
Fungi are also increasingly able to migrate to new environments that were inhospitable decades ago. Vermont, which is not a state where blastomyces is considered endemic, has become the fungi’s newest home.
Earlier this year, Vermont health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention searched insurance claims data to find cases of blastomycosis, which the state is not required to report.
They have exposed 114 residents who had the infection. Of those 114 diagnoses, 30 had one or more blastomycosis-related hospitalizations, and four died from the infection.
Massachusetts also does not have to report cases of blastomycosis to the federal government. It was there that 60-year-old Darcy Coderre became seriously ill with what her doctors originally deduced was pneumonia.
They also believed the mark on her lung was cancer when she first presented to doctors in 2016. Only after performing a biopsy did doctors realize they were actually looking at a case of blastomycosis.
She said: ‘My doctor was quite shocked. He said he had not seen a case of that in Massachusetts.
‘We tried to find out where I got it from, but we couldn’t figure it out. I garden, so we thought it could come from the ground. I take walks, but I pretty much stay on the trails.”
Antifungal medications worked and she recovered, but she still has two scars on her lungs from the infection. She now also has asthma, which she believes is a lingering effect of her illness.
Another sinister fungus is on the rise, but its relationship to climate change is even murkier. Instead, the Candida auris strain is most commonly associated with hospital settings where the disease can spread rapidly, especially among residents of long-term care facilities or among individuals with indwelling equipment – such as catheters, tracheostomies or wound drains – or on mechanical ventilators.
Candida auris is an acute global health problem and is becoming increasingly common in the US every year.
Federal government tracking shows there were about 60 infections in the U.S. between 2013 and 2016, but more than 2,300 cases in 2022 alone.
Antifungal medications may also be ineffective. Some C auris infections are resistant to all three types of antifungal medications: azoles, echinocandins, and amphotericin B. Echinocandins are the first line of treatment for treating C auris.
Multi-resistant strains of C auris have become increasingly common in recent years.