Fungal Diversity & Mucormycosis- a health concern
“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease”- Gautama Buddha
The gift of precious human life by the nature is the story of victory against the several natural and manmade forces like disease, starvation, war, accidents, natural disasters (earthquake, flood, and volcanic eruptions), genocides, homicides etc. But for most of the human history, the strongest force of death was infectious disease, the most notorious and nasty feature of evolution in which the most tiny, microscopic, rapidly reproducing organisms make their living at the cost of miserable sufferings of the human hosts. Epidemics killed the millions, wiping out entire civilization and exposed the humans in utter sufferings. The sufferings from epiodemics have wide spans staring from 6th century to until date. The first plague pandemic (6th-8th century), black death due to plague in 1346–1353, influenza pandemic in 1591–1520, Persian plague in 1772–1773, influenza pandemic in 1918(Spanish flu) HIV/AIDS pandemic in 1981, SARS pandemic in 2002, Swine flu pandemic in 2009 to recent COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 are some of the milestones of graves in the history of human disasters and sufferings. The recent outbreak of black fungus epidemic is just another addition in the chronicle of human sufferings and the gravity of this fungus has increased the human toll of life. The black fungus is one of the most notorious members of fungal kingdom and it causes a disease on human popularly known as mucormycosis. Before having the exposure of this growing nightmare, let us visit the biodiversity in general and fungal diversity in particular. Genes (unit of character) provides the blueprint of the construction and functioning of the organisms and their diversity is clearly fundamental. The biological world comprises of five kingdoms broadly viz. Monera (Unicellular prokariotes), Protista (Unicellular/multicelluar eukaryotes) Fungi (Unicellular or multicellular, eukaryotes and heterotrophs), Plantae (Multicelluar autotrophs) and animalia (Multicelluar with holozoic nutrition). The total species still enumerated is 17, 44, 000 out of which Bacteria 4000, Protista (80000) Fungi (70000), Plants (270000) and animalia (1320000) although the estimated species are 140, 000000 including 1500,000 fungi.
Fungi are cryptic, understudied and hyper diverse organisms. The eukaryotic organisms cannot produce food and depend on enzymatic processes to break down biopolymers absorbed for nutrition. It encompasses tremendous biological diversity with members spanning a wide array of lifestyles, forms, habitats and size. Fungi completes indispensable ecological roles most notably decomposition processes but also involved in the number of beneficial attributes starting from food to medicines along with a lot of sufferings from disease to death. Mucormycosis is also called zygomycosis and it is one of the rarest types of human disease caused by fungus. This dreadful disease not a new one but has drawn the attention of the millions particularly during the post-infection of COVID-19. It has been known as zygomycosis due to production of zygospore on the zygosporangia borne on the sporangiophores of the aerial coenocytes asepatate mycelium of Phycomycetes popularly called algae fungi as the members prefer humid climate with water exposure for their growth. A number of species of the different genera cause mucormycosis causing a diverse type of the disease like Rhinocerebral mucormycosis (Sinus & brain), pulmonary mucormycosis( Lungs),Gastrointestinal mucormycosis ( Gastrointestinal tract of children),Cutaneous mucormycosis( skin) and Disseminated mucormycosis ( through blood).The most common genera that cause this most unnatural infections are Rhizopus, Mucor, Rhizomucor, Syncephalastrum,Cunninghamella, Apophysomyces, Lichetheimia species etc. The recent upsurge of the mucormycosis is nothing but opportunistic infections and this has been accelerated due to the COVID-19 infections along with the medications. People suffering from the COVID have become prone to this disease due to several issues. Any type of infection is due to the deficiency of the immune system and the people suffering from certain issues like diabetes, organ transplantation etc may become prone to the diseases. Very often immune suppressant medicines are administered to overcome cytokine storm and as the immunity system has been suppressed due to use of steroids and other immunosuppressant, body become hijacked by number of organisms by the spores. Steroids are the necessary evil in terms of the long term effects of the immunity system of the human immune system. Mucormycoisis are just one kind of infection in comparison to the others. In the recent outbreaks of the mucormycosis among the COVID patients is very alarming. The spores of the Mucor sp. commonly enters via sinus, hyphae outgrow, relentlessly destroy the adjoin tissues for nutrition and ultimately become angioinvesive, moves to the lungs and ultimately invades the brain and cause severe damages within the short span of the time. Black masses can be seen in the nasal cavity and oral cavity as it is called as black fungus. The infection due to Mucor spores produce a number of danger signals like fever, headache, reddish and swollen skin near the nose or eyes, facial pain, cough with dark fluids or bloody appearance, shortness of breath etc but the confirmation can be done by the tissue biopsy or the X-ray scan of the lungs. The disease is not contiguous and does not spread from person to person. The presence of the disease is an old recorded history but in the Covid pandemic situation, as the person administered steroids along with other medicines with unavoidable medical devices, the post-Covid persons have been suffering a lot. The common people having the history of diabetes with high blood sugar, steroids medication, blood malignancies, and uses of immunosuppressant, Patients with excess iron content along with burns, trauma and other immunological issues have the chance to suffer from this nightmare. Although the mortality rate is very often more than 50%, the disease has surly an answer for the treatment by the use of the anti-fungal drugs but in most cases, the diagnosis becomes too late that causes mortality. You can prevent this unfortunate reality if you follow certain preventive measures during this pandemic catastrophe. Maintenance of good hygienic practices, proper humidifier during oxygen administration, limited doses of steroids, undesired administration of broad spectrum antibiotics, control of blood sugar, sound oral and nasal hygiene along with other cleanliness are mostly important to minimize the exposure of this infection. We must believe “God didn’t promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow or sunshine without rain. But He did promise strength for the day and light for the way”.
