Thousands of Americans have been affected by an incurable fungus on the West Coast, known as a “new epidemic.”
Valley fever, named because most cases are found in Arizona and California, is a deadly lung infection that kills one in every 100 people who contract it.
This year, the numbers have increased to 9,826 in California, which is a 46 percent increase from last year.
Meanwhile, 12,368 cases of valley fever have been reported in Arizona, up from 10,990 cases in 2023, representing an increase of more than 11 percent.
Experts are now desperately trying to design a human vaccine against the fungus to help stop its spread.
The University of Arizona’s Valley Fever Center of Excellence recently obtained $33 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop a vaccine.
Its director, Dr. John Galgiani, helped develop one for dogs that is still in the process of being licensed for commercial marketing. But it is expected that the blow can be transferred to humans.
“I’ve been thinking about a human vaccine all the time, but applying it through the dog is actually a very useful step in proving the concept, which makes the idea of bringing it to humans much more attractive,” said Mr Galgiani. .
Valley fever is caused by the fungus coccidioides, which releases spores into the air when soil is disturbed and which people then inhale.
Thousands of Californians have been hit by an incurable fungus on the West Coast called the ‘new American epidemic’
There is no person-to-person transmission.
The disease, for which there is currently no preventive vaccine, can often be missed or misdiagnosed by doctors as pneumonia because it has similar symptoms such as fatigue, cough, fever, muscle pain and shortness of breath.
Other symptoms include night sweats, joint pain, and a red rash, usually on the legs, but occasionally on the chest, arms, and back.
But up to 10 percent of infections become serious and take months to recover from.
In these cases, known as disseminated coccidioidomycosis, the disease can spread through the bloodstream to other parts of the body, including the brain, skin, and liver.
If it infects the membranes and fluid surrounding the brain, it can cause life-threatening meningitis.
On average, there were approximately 200 deaths associated with coccidioidomycosis each year between 1999 and 2021.
There is no proven treatment for valley fever and patients are generally prescribed rest and given therapies to control symptoms.
Doctors can prescribe antifungal medications, but there is no evidence from clinical trials that these treatments are effective, and antifungal medications carry the potential for serious side effects.
In 1996, the Valley Fever Center of Excellence at the University of Arizona was created to address problems caused by the fungus coccidioides.
Two-thirds of all valley fever infections in the United States occur in Arizona, primarily in the urban areas surrounding Phoenix and Tucson.
The fungal spore rises into the air when wind or digging disturbs the soil. When humans or animals breathe in the spores, they travel through the respiratory tract to the lungs where they reproduce.
The infection was called Valley Fever because 97 percent of the cases are in Arizona and California.
The number of valley fever cases peaked for the first time in a decade in 2021.
The 20,970 cases recorded were the most recorded in a single year since the last peak in 2011.
Cases declined in 2022 but rebounded last year, and experts are concerned about an expected rise in the fungus in the coming decades.
The CDC estimates that Valley Fever could infect more than half a million Americans each year in the future.
The agency said that due to rising temperatures around the world, the disease’s endemic region will extend northward to include dry western areas.
Other experts fear it could be endemic in 17 states by the year 2100.