Climate change and the emergence of fungal pathogens
Abstract
The role of the environment in emerging and reemerging infectious diseases is increasingly recognized [1,2]. Climate change, defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” [3] may create environmental pressures that result in new diseases caused by fungi [4]. While viral and bacterial diseases receive most attention as the potential cause of plagues and pandemics, fungi can arguably pose equal or even greater threats: There are no vaccines available yet for fungal pathogens, the arsenal of antifungal agents is extremely limited, and fungi can live saprotrophically, producing large quantities of infectious spores and do not require host-to-host contact to establish infection [5]. Indeed, fungi seem to be uniquely capable of causing complete host extinction [6]. For the vast majority of fungal species, the capacity to grow at elevated temperatures limits their ability to infect and establish in mammals. However, fungi can be trained to evolve thermotolerance, and gradual adaptation to increasing temperature caused by climate change could lead to an increase of organisms that can cause disease [7,8]. In addition, climate change can increase the geographic range of pathogenic species or their vectors, leading to the emergence of…
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