This Deadly Fungus Keeps Learning How to Beat Every Drug We Throw at It

A dangerous fungal germ has learned how to completely outsmart humanity—and not for the first time. In a recent report, scientists in Kenya detailed a worrying case of Candidozyma auris found in a 28-year-old patient. The person’s infection was resistant to all major types of antifungal drugs, they found. This particular strain might be unrelated to past pan-resistant cases, the researchers say, suggesting that this fungus can repeatedly adapt to all of our available weapons against it. The strain’s “resistance to four major antifungal classes highlights the escalating threat of untreatable fungal infections, particularly in settings with limited access to novel antifungal agents,” the authors wrote in their paper, published late last month in the journal Scientific Reports. A pan-resistant threat C. auris (formerly known as Candida auris) has emerged as one of the most concerning superbug threats in the world. Though many people carry the fungus on their skin without harm, it can cause severe, life-threatening infections in people with weakened immune systems or generally poorer health. What makes C. auris especially scary is that it’s uniquely adept at evolving resistance to the most common medications used to treat fungal infections. This latest case was documented in a woman who visited a hospital for an elective inpatient surgery. Afterward, she developed a hospital-acquired infection at the surgical site. Though she was given antibiotics for a potential bacterial infection, she continued to experience illness, and a swab of her wound pus revealed the presence of C. auris. The researchers eventually confirmed that her strain was resistant to all four major antifungal classes. According to the report, the hospital was made aware of the strain’s resistance to “facilitate implementation of C. auris-specific infection prevention and control measures.” However, the report does not detail what ultimately happened to the patient herself. There have been several outbreaks and cases of highly resistant C. auris reported over the years, and at least one confirmed case of an infection resistant to all four major types of antifungals was reported in 2022. While this would be only the second such pan-resistant case documented in the world, the researchers say, there’s an added wrinkle that makes this discovery all the more worrying. They sequenced the genome of the patient’s strain, and they found that it carries resistance mutations different from those found in the 2022 case. Though the researchers can’t fully rule out the possibility their case originated from the earlier strain, it’s more likely that this lineage of C. auris independently evolved pan-resistance all on its own, they argue. A worrying superbug future C. auris is still a relatively rare fungal infection, but its global burden has clearly been rising over time. There were at least 6,304 U.S. cases reported in 2024, the highest number seen yet, and it’s been documented in at least 50 countries. For the time being, fully untreatable infections of C. auris are likely to be especially rare. C. auris outbreaks can also still be stopped with proper containment measures outside of antifungals. And scientists are working to develop other kinds of interventions like vaccines for the fungus. But if pan-resistance is happening regularly, there’s always the risk that one of these strains will eventually spread widely and make C. auris even more of a nightmare to deal with.