A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
It’s just a matter of time before it reaches the U.S., a CDC expert warns
A fungus that first started infecting cats in Brazil is spreading through South America. Cats, like these two brawling in the street in Brazil, can spread the disease by scratching and biting or by grooming.
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WASHINGTON — Microbiologists are used to looking at gross pictures and hearing scary statistics. So when a moderator of a session on emerging fungal infections at the ASM Microbe meeting uttered the words “somewhat terrifying,” it caught my attention. He was referring to a sexually transmitted skin infection that is becoming increasingly drug resistant. But what came next was even more horrifying to me.
Medical mycologist Shawn Lockhart stepped to the podium and began describing a fungal disease that attacks cats, causing oozing skin ulcers and worse, and spreads to humans. It isn’t yet in the United States … that officials know of. But the disease, caused by Sporothrix brasiliensis, has sickened and killed thousands of cats and infected more than 11,000 people and at least 200 dogs in South America since its emergence in Brazil in the 1990s.