In today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), investigators describe seven C auris cases that occurred from May 2013 to June 2016. The cases involve patients at hospitals in four states—New York, Maryland, Illinois, and New Jersey—who had been hospitalized with serious underlying medical conditions. The other six cases are still under investigation.The announcement comes 3 months after the agency warned US healthcare facilities about the emergence of the serious fungal infection, which was first identified in the ear of a Japanese patient in 2009 and since then has been identified in patients in several other countries. The CDC received the case reports after that clinical alert was issued.In the countries where it has previously been identified, C auris has most commonly caused healthcare-associated infections such as bloodstream infections, wound infections, and ear infections and has been associated with high mortality. CDC investigators report that 5 of the US patients had bloodstream infections, 1 had a urine infection, and 1 had an ear infection. The median time from hospital admission to detection of the infection was 18 days.Four of the patients died, but it is unclear if their deaths were caused by the C auris infection.”This is a serious global health threat for which we want to rigorously prepare for in the United States,” Tom Chiller, MD, MPHTM, deputy chief of the Mycotic Diseases Branch at the CDC, told CIDRAP News.
Source: CDC reports first US cases of drug-resistant Candida auris | CIDRAP









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