New Antifungals Highlighted At ICAAC

Fungal infections are on the increase, delegates at the 37thIntersciences Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, held in Toronto, Canada, heard. This situation has arisen because of a variety of reasons, including chemotherapy, which results in patients being in an immunocompromised state for long periods of time, increased use of transplantation and greater use of broad-spectrum antibacterials. The number of effective drugs to combat this alarming trend is very limited. However, the meeting highlighted a number of promising new antifungal therapies.

One new approach to treating fungal infections may be host immunity, according to scientists at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in California, USA.

Many researchers have observed the importance of cellular immunity (ie immunity conferred by lymphocytes, macrophages and granulocytes, etc) as critical to the outcome of fungal infections. It was discovered that if cellular immunity is impaired, for example as a result of underlying disease or treatment of that disease, then the fungal infection progresses despite high antibody titers. Experimental work with animals has since demonstrated that fungal infections could be made better or worse by stimulating or impairing cellular immunity, respectively.