Illness-causing fungi spreading across US

Researchers found more than 10 percent of fungal infections are diagnosed outside regions where the pathogens were known to be endemic, NBC News reported Nov. 21.

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The study, published Nov. 22 in Annals of Internal Medicine, comes weeks after another study found 94 percent of U.S. states had at least one county with high numbers of histoplasmosis cases and 69 percent with Valley fever cases.

“We’re definitely seeing disease in locations that we previously have not,” George Thompson, MD, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California Davis, told NBC News. “And that’s concerning because if we’re recognizing those locations, where are the places it’s occurring that just have not been recognized quite yet?”

Climate change may be to blame for these fungi expanding to new regions, according to the report.

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