Could a fungal pandemic turn us all into zombies? - BBC

Let maine present you to thing genuinely horrifying - the fungus that turns its victims into zombies.

Its spores participate the body. The fungus past grows and begins to hijack the caput of its big until it loses power and is compelled to ascent to higher ground.

The parasitic fungus devours its unfortunate from the inside, extracting each past nutrient, arsenic it prepares for its large finale.

Then - successful a country much disturbing than the scariest fearfulness movie - a tendril of decease erupts from the head. This fruiting assemblage of the fungus showers spores connected everything astir it - dooming others to the aforesaid zombie fate.

It sounds similar a enactment of fiction. But the kingdom of fungi - chiseled from plants and animals - ranges from edible mushrooms to nightmare-fuel parasites.

Species of parasitic Cordyceps and Ophiocordyceps fungi are precise real. Here, connected the BBC's Planet Earth series, Sir David Attenborough watches arsenic 1 takes power of an ant:

That clip of zombie ants inspired "The Last of Us" - perchance the champion video crippled I've ever played, and present a deed TV bid which follows the aforesaid plot.

In some the crippled and connected TV, Cordyceps makes the leap from preying connected its accustomed insect victims, to infecting humans. The resulting pandemic leads to the illness of society.

But successful the existent world, is simply a Cordyceps pandemic - oregon 1 caused by different fungus - ever apt to happen?

"I deliberation we underestimate fungal infections astatine our peril," Dr Neil Stone, starring fungal adept astatine the Hospital for Tropical Diseases successful London, tells me.

"We've already done that for excessively agelong and we are wholly unprepared for dealing with a fungal pandemic."

There are immoderate nasty bugs connected there, but you'll beryllium relieved to cognize that zombifying-Cordyceps bash not feature.

Dr Charissa de Bekker, a microbiologist astatine Utrecht University, has studied however Cordyceps creates zombified ants and says she cannot spot the aforesaid ever happening successful people.

"Our assemblage somesthesia is simply excessively precocious for astir fungi to nicely settee and turn - and this is the aforesaid for this Cordyceps.

"Their tense strategy is simpler than ours, truthful it would decidedly beryllium easier to hijack the encephalon of an insect versus our brain, besides their immune systems are precise antithetic from ours."

Most taxon of parasitic Cordyceps person evolved implicit millions of years to specialise successful infecting conscionable 1 insect species. Most bash not leap from 1 insect to another.

"For this fungus to beryllium capable to leap from an insect to america and origin an corruption is simply a precise large leap," says Dr de Bekker.

The threats posed by fungi person been dismissed for a agelong time. "People deliberation of it arsenic thing trivial, superficial oregon unimportant," says Dr Stone.

Only a fistful of the millions of taxon of fungi origin disease, but immoderate of them tin beryllium truthful overmuch worse than an irritating bout of Athlete's ft oregon an infected toenail.

The WHO has identified 19 antithetic fungi it thinks are a important worry.

These see the abrupt emergence of a deadly superbug, Candida auris - and a fungi, Mucormycetes, that eats our soma truthful rapidly that it leads to terrible facial injuries.

Dr Neil Stone invites maine to Health Services Laboratory (HSL) successful London, wherever samples from UK patients are analysed to spot if their infections are caused by a fungus and what treatments whitethorn work. We sermon immoderate of the biggest fungal dangers.

Candida auris is the archetypal we look at.

It's a yeast-type fungus and you get that beardown waft of a brewery, oregon breadstuff dough, erstwhile you are adjacent it.

But if it gets wrong the body, it tin invade the blood, tense strategy and interior organs. The WHO estimates up to fractional of radical dice if they person an invasive corruption of Candida auris.

"It's similar a monster which has appeared successful the past 15 years oregon so, but it's present being recovered each implicit the world," says Dr Stone.

The archetypal documented lawsuit was successful the receptor of a diligent astatine Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital in 2009.

Candida auris people shrugs disconnected anti-fungal drugs and immoderate strains are resistant to each of the medicines we have. That's wherefore it's considered a superbug.

Transmission is chiefly done contaminated surfaces successful hospitals. It sticks to intravenous lines and humor unit cuffs. It's truly hard to cleanable off. The solution is often to adjacent full wards. This has happened adjacent successful the UK.

Dr Stone says it is the "most worrying" fungi and we "ignore it astatine our peril" as, if it takes off, "it could unopen down full healthcare systems".

Another slayer fungus - Cryptococcus neoformans - is capable to get into people's tense systems and origin devastating meningitis.

Sid and Ellie were lone successful the archetypal days of their honeymoon successful Costa Rica erstwhile Ellie started to consciousness ill.

Her archetypal symptoms - headaches and nausea - were enactment down to excessively overmuch sun, but past she started jerking and developed full-blown seizures. She had to beryllium bundled up successful a hammock and taken successful a vessel to get aesculapian help.

"I've ne'er seen thing much horrifying and particularly feeling truthful helpless," Sid tells me.

Scans showed swelling connected her encephalon and tests identified Cryptococcus. Fortunately, Ellie responded to treatment. She came retired of a coma aft 12 days connected a ventilator.

"I conscionable retrieve screaming," she says. She had delusions - including of having triplets, and that her hubby had gambled their wealth away. "So the archetypal happening I said to him was it's over," she says.

Now, Ellie is recovering well. She says she "never" thought a fungus could bash specified a happening to a person. "You don't deliberation you're going to spell connected your honeymoon and astir die."

Mucormycetes also known arsenic achromatic fungus, causes the flesh-eating illness mucormycosis. It has a nickname that reveals its insidious quality - the lid lifter.

It takes disconnected truthful quickly. This representation shows that, aft conscionable 24 hours increasing successful a petri dish, it tin assistance the lid off.

"When you person a portion of effect and the adjacent time it's turned to mush, that's due to the fact that it has had a mucor-fungus [Mucormycetes] wrong of it," says Dr Rebecca Gorton, a objective idiosyncratic astatine HSL. She says it's uncommon successful humans, but tin beryllium a "really superior infection".

Black fungus is an opportunist that takes clasp successful radical with anemic immune systems. It assaults the face, eyes, and encephalon and tin beryllium fatal oregon permission radical severely disfigured. A atrocious corruption "grows arsenic quickly" successful the assemblage arsenic it does successful effect oregon the lab, warns Dr Gorton.

During the Covid pandemic, determination was an detonation of achromatic fungus cases successful India. More than 4,000 radical died. Steroids being taken for Covid, which weakened immune systems, and precocious levels of diabetes, are thought to person aided the fungus's proliferation.

Fungi are precise antithetic types of corruption to bacteria oregon viruses. When a fungus makes america ill, it is astir ever picked up from the situation alternatively than dispersed done coughs and sneezes.

We are each regularly exposed to fungi, but they often request a weakened immune strategy successful bid to instrumentality off. As medicine keeps much of america live - specified arsenic surviving immoderate crab treatments - determination are much of america with weaker immune systems.

Dr Stone says a fungal pandemic would astir apt instrumentality "a antithetic form" to Covid - successful some however it spreads and the benignant of radical it infects.

He thinks the menace is determination due to the fact that of "the axenic measurement of fungi successful the environment... clime change, planetary travel, expanding fig of cases and their heavy neglect successful presumption of treatments we have".

Fungi mightiness not crook america each into zombies, but they tin origin acold much problems than a spot of Athlete's foot.