CDC Warning: New Fungus Infection Strikes 2 in New Jersey, 7 Nationwide

A new, potentially dangerous fungus infection has stricken two people in New Jersey and at least 7 people nationwide, the CDC has warned.

The cases of "Candida auris," a serious and sometimes fatal fungal infection that is emerging globally, have been identified in New Jersey and elsewhere in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Patients with C. auris were reported in four states: New York, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey. All of the patients had serious underlying medical conditions and had been hospitalized an average of 18 days when C. auris was identified, according to the CDC.

Four of the patients - including one in New Jersey - died, although it is unclear whether all the deaths were associated with C. auris infection or underlying health conditions.

The New Jersey patient died in July 2015 after suffering from a brain tumor, according to the CDC. The agency did not say where the New Jersey cases took place.

“We need to act now to better understand, contain and stop the spread of this drug-resistant fungus,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a CDC release. “This is an emerging threat, and we need to protect vulnerable patients and others.”

Candida grows as yeast, and symptoms include difficulty swallowing, burning, genital itching and sometimes a cheese-like discharge that looks white, according to the CDC.

Most of the C. auris strains from U.S. patients (71 percent) showed some drug resistance, making treatment more difficult. Samples of C. auris strains from other countries have been found to be resistant to all three major classes of antifungal medications.

However, none of the U.S. strains in this report were resistant to all three antifungal drug classes. Based on laboratory testing, the U.S. strains were found to be related to strains from South Asia and South America.

However, none of the patients travelled to or had any direct links to those regions. Most patients likely acquired the infections locally, according to the CDC release.

The seven cases occurred between May 2013 and August 2016 and were described Friday in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The other six cases were identified after the period covered by the report and are still under investigation.

The report is the first to describe U.S. cases of C. auris infection. C. auris is often resistant to antifungal drugs and tends to occur in hospitalized patients. In June 2016, CDC issued a clinical alert describing the global emergence of C. auris and requesting that laboratories report C. auris cases and send patient samples to state and local health departments and CDC.

Since then, CDC has been investigating reports of C. auris with several state and local health departments. The agency expects to continue to investigate possible cases as awareness of the emerging infection increases.

In two instances, two patients had been treated in the same hospital or long-term-care facility and had nearly identical fungal strains. These findings suggest that C. auris could be spread in healthcare settings.

Six of the seven cases were identified through retrospective review of hospital and reference laboratory records. Identifying C. auris requires specialized laboratory methods because it can easily be misidentified as another type of Candida infection, in which case patients may not receive appropriate treatment. Most of the patient samples in the current report were initially misidentified as another species of Candida, according to the CDC release.

Photo: CDC