Question

discuss challenges associated with treating fungal infections

Answer 1

Invasive fungal infection (IFI) is the term which describes systemic, generalized and severe, life-threatening fungal infections, in contrast to superficial, local, benign, self-limiting fungal diseases. In general, IFI describes a severe, systemic infection caused by yeasts or moulds. The incidence of IFIs have increased recently. Systemic fungal infections with opportunistic yeast-like fungi and moulds such as Zygomycetes, Fusarium spp. etc. have become the cause of many infection-related complications ad deaths in Leukemic patients.

Species of Candida and Aspergillus have been the most common causes of IFIs, whereas other fungi are emerging as significant infectious agents. A marked shift in the epidemiological profile of fungal infections has been observed and  fungi such as Zygomycetes , hyaline moulds, yeast-like fungi and some dematiaceous fungi are being emerged.

These emerging fungi are difficult to diagnose, and they exhibit less susceptibility to standard antifungal agents, which makes the treatment the most difficult and therefore carry a poor prognosis. The challenges in antifungal treatments are contributed by the increasing resistance of common fungal agents and new and emerging stains of fungi to existing antifungal therapies. The lack of efficient diagnostic tools that enables rapid and accurate diagnosis complicates the issue. Patients with systemic fungi are difficult to distinguish clinically from patients with bacterial sepsis, which results in an initial delay in instituting antifungal therapy.