Cryptococcal meningitis is an infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. The fungus that causes this infection is found in soil. The risk is highest when CD4 cell counts are below 100. You can get it by breathing in dust. Symptoms include headache, nausea, fever, fatigue, irritability, sensitivity to light, stiff neck, change in mental state, and hallucinations.
A new short-course treatment is effective against HIV-associated cryptococcal meningitis with fewer serious side effects, and has the potential to reduce the length and cost of hospital admissions, a study shows.
Current medications aren't particularly effective against fungi. The situation is becoming more challenging because these organisms are developing resistance to antimicrobial treatments, just as bacteria are.
Hopes that tamoxifen could improve survival for a deadly form of fungal meningitis have been dashed by clinical trial results published in eLife.
An innovative cell-based treatment for cancer has been found promising for the control of infections caused by fungi.
A common first-line treatment approach for cryptococcal meningitis in low-income countries is being compromised by the emergence of drug resistance, new University of Liverpool research warns.
A common first-line treatment approach for cryptococcal meningitis in low-income countries is being compromised by the emergence of drug resistance, new University of Liverpool research warns.
The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $2.7 million grant to Luis R. Martinez, Ph.D., associate professor of biological sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso, to study a potentially life-threatening fungus and suggest possible treatments.
The results of the ACTA trial were presented at the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science held in Paris from 23 to 26 July 2017. Professor Thomas Harrison and his colleagues at St George's University of London, the Institut Pasteur in Paris, Paris Descartes University (Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades), the ANRS site in Cameroon, and the MRC sites in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia show in this trial that new therapeutic regimens are of benefit in HIV-infected patients with cryptococcal meningitis.
Large populations of potentially deadly cryptococcal fungi have been found on woody debris collected from old trees in two public areas in the center of Cape Town and the Northern Cape, South Africa.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 20th July 2017 suggests that a cocktail of drugs, if provided at the beginning of the HIV therapy, can save over 10,000 lives per year. HIV, which is often diagnosed late, leaves people vulnerable to other diseases by ravaging the immune system.
International HIV experts have reported approximately 250,000 fungal meningitis cases annually, in the AIDS report, sub-Saharan Africa contributing 73% of cases. Cryptococcus fungus causes fungal meningitis and usually affects individuals who are above 35 years old, affecting the tissues covering the brain and the spinal cord
Estimates never before attempted, show the number of people affected by serious fungal diseases in 14 of the worst affected countries across the globe have just been published.
New concepts of infectious disease are evolving with the realization that pathogens are key players in the development of progressive chronic diseases that originally were not thought to be infectious. Infection is well-known to be associated with numerous neurological diseases for which...
A drug, more commonly used in the treatment of angina, could be the focus of a new strategy in fighting the fatal fungal infection cryptococcosis
Cryptococcus is a fungus found in the environment throughout the world that is able to cause disease in humans. While most fungal pathogens don’t receive as much press as their bacterial or viral counterparts, they can be just as deadly.
Scientists at Duke Medicine are using transparent fish to watch in real time as Cryptococcal meningitis takes over the brain. The resulting images are worthy of a sci-fi movie teaser, but could be valuable in disrupting the real, crippling brain infection that kills more than 600,000 people worldwide each year.
The fungus Cryptococcus causes meningitis, a brain disease that kills about 1 million people each year — mainly those with impaired immune systems due to AIDS, cancer treatment or an organ transplant.
A new approach to care for patients with advanced HIV in Tanzania and Zambia, combining community support and screening for a type of meningitis, has reduced deaths by 28%.
A leading microbiologist has warned of the increasing threat that killer fungi poses to humans and the environment.
In a remarkable series of experiments on a fungus that causes cryptococcal meningitis, a deadly infection of the membranes that cover the spinal cord and brain, investigators at UC Davis have isolated a protein that appears to be responsible for the fungus' ability to cross from the bloodstream into the brain.