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Toxic Fungus Moving Into Oregon

Typically Tropical Fungus Found In Pacific

Northwest

POSTED: 9:47 am PST January 1,

2008

UPDATED: 10:03 am PST January 1,

2008

 

 

 

EUGENE,

Ore. -- It

sounds like a bad B movie, a toxic fungus in the woods of the Pacific

Northwest drifting into peoples' lungs, causing illness and death.But

cryptococcus gattii is out there and has affected a handful of

Oregonians, most recently a Junction City woman hospitalized for more

than four months this fall.In the Northwest it was first

detected on Vancouver Island in 1999, where it has sickened about 180

residents and killed eight, said Karen Bartlett, associate professor of

environmental health at the University of British Columbia. The disease

is still rare.Previously it was associated with tropical and

subtropical climates. Nobody is quite sure how it wound up in

Oregon.Bartlett

said it may have arrived on an imported plant or bird. Others say it

may have been here for a long time, unnoticed until changes in climate

or land-use patterns allowed it to grow in high enough concentrations

to become airborne.Even small changes in climate, such as an

increase in temperature of a degree or two, can cause changes to

microscopic organisms that are in dynamic balance with each other, she

said.Once the fungus is established in soil or in trees, it can

float in the air in dry weather, she said, causing an infection in the

lungs, or more seriously, in the central nervous system, causing fungal

meningitis.Symptoms include severe cough and shortness of breath, often

accompanied by chills, night sweats and anorexia.Until 2004, the only

human cases in Canada were found among people who lived on or had

traveled to Vancouver Island.In

2004, when the first case was found in someone who had never been to

the island, researchers began looking elsewhere and found other cases,

including two in Oregon.One, an 87-year-old Portland man, died from

fungal meningitis in December 2005.Scientists

in Oregon took 197 samples of air, soil, water, trees and other

structures but found nothing. But they knew it had to be in Oregon

because the victims had not gone to Vancouver Island, said Dr. Paul

Cieslak, manager of the communicable diseases program in the state

Public Health Division."We don't know how long it's been here.

The researchers said they don't know whether the samples found outside

Vancouver Island means the fungus has colonized other areas, or whether

they just represented transient dispersal of the fungus," Bartlett

said.Initial

symptoms resemble flu and a general malaise. Only after symptoms

continue for several weeks or worsen with a cough that doesn't go away,

unexplained weight loss and night sweats do physicians realize they're

dealing with something else, she said.Illness occurs six to nine

months after exposure. Once diagnosed, it is very treatable unless it

gets to the central nervous system, as happened to the Junction City

woman.She was treated for bacterial meningitis, but wasn't

getting better. It wasn't until lab tests came back that Eugene Dr.

Robert Barnes figured out she had fungal meningitis.Doctors say they

don't know where she got it.All

told, she spent about four months in the hospital, including stints in

the intensive care unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene and

the Oregon Health & Science University. She went home Dec. 10 and

appears to be doing well, her husband said.She declined to be

interviewed.From

a public health perspective, it is more a curiosity than a real threat

at this point, said Cieslak, but said he wants to learn where it is in

the state and how it works."You've got bigger things to worry

about," he said. "If we start to get more reports and it's increasing,

I'll sit up and take note.

 

Copyright 2008 by The Associated

Press. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or

redistributed.

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