This is Not News

So, we are seeing increasingly large numbers of antifungal resistant infections as a result of overuse.

This is not a surprise.

7 years ago, there were a number of articles finding a surprising number of people entering hospital in Holland with resistant fungal infections, which is odd, because normally you get resistant infections in hospital, you don't come in that way.

It turned out that huge amounts of antifungal medications were used in the cultivation of Tulips, leading to hotspots of resistance outside of hospital wards.

Now, we are seeing resistant fungi popping out all around the world:

Clinicians in the US may be overprescribing topical antifungal treatments for skin infections, potentially exacerbating a growing problem of drug resistance, according to a new study.

Drug-resistant ringworm reported in US for first time; community spread likelyLast year, a dermatologist in New York reported the country's first cases of a newly emerging skin fungus that is highly contagious and resistant to common antifungal treatments. Silent community spread appeared to be behind the unconnected cases. Overall, drug-resistant fungal skin infection cases (aka ringworm) have been identified in at least 11 US states to date.

With resistance on the rise, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a closer look at how US clinicians prescribe topical antifungals. As is the case of antibiotics and bacterial infections, overuse of antifungals can drive the development of resistance. And properly diagnosing skin infections can be extremely difficult without diagnostics. A 2016 survey study found that even board-certified dermatologists were frequently wrong when trying to identify skin infections just by sight.

Over-prescription may be a problem, but if this is anything like agricultural antibiotic use, where 80% of the antibiotics in the US are used on farm animals, it is a drop in the proverbial bucket.