Mycology (continued)

Mycology continued

Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicine, food, and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection.

Concerned with diagnosis, management, and prevention of fungal diseases or mycoses • Mycoses are among the most difficult diseases to diagnose and treat – Signs of mycoses are often missed or misinterpreted – Fungi are often resistant to some antifungal agents
Diagnosis of invasive fungal disease (IFD) is challenging because current diagnostic methods lack sensitivity and specificity, or take too long to yield a result to be clinically useful. Such limitations have consequences; delayed diagnosis leads to delayed treatment. Speed to diagnosis is a key risk factor in patient outcomes (Barnes 2008). Diagnosis of fungal infection is further complicated by problematic developments in the field of medical mycology. First and foremost is the loss of senior mycology experts in the field who were trained in classical mycology, which has created crises-level problems in clinical mycology (Steinbach et al. 2003). This problem has been compounded over the last 30 years as the spectrum of fungi-causing infections has exploded owing to AIDS and the use of highly immunosuppressive agents for treatment of a variety of diseases. These patients are susceptible to infections from fungi rarely seen, or never reported as a human pathogen, which can cause identification problems for even the most experienced mycologists. Whereas mycologists in the past needed to be able to identify ∼50 commonly encountered fungi, and ∼300 total fungi that were pathogenic for humans, the number of potential fungal pathogens is likely many times what is described in textbooks, and will continue to grow as the severely immunosuppressed patient population continues to grow 

Diagnosis of fungal infection has relied primarily on methods such as direct microscopic examination of clinical samples, histopathology, and culture. Such approaches are dependent on personnel with relatively high levels of specific mycology training. The growth in the number of fungi that clinical mycologists must identify has forced investigators to develop and apply new methods for fungal identification that go beyond classical phenotypic methods. As a consequence, there is an increased emphasis on the use of molecular methods and antigen detection as surrogates for culture in diagnosis of fungal diseases.

!!**REMEMBER TO STAY POSITIVE LIKE A PROTON**!!