United States: The US States, California, and Arizona are facing a fatal lung infection crisis that has been noticed as the worst outbreak so far in the current year.
Termed “Valley Fever”, this disease is caused by a fungus and the CDC lists the symptoms as fatigue, night sweats, muscle aches, rashes, and long-term lung problems wherein one in every one hundred dies.
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In the year 2024, the Daily Mail indicated that valley fever has affected the Californian population in 9,826 incidences. This means an increase of a whopping 46 percent from the projected number of 2023.
That is why, for example, in Arizona, authorities have identified 12,368 cases of the disease, which is 11 percent of what it was last year.
Since ever this or that person is getting ill, the University of Arizona Valley Fever Center of Excellence is trying to find a vaccine.
At the moment, the Valley Fever Center has been able to get USD 33 million thanks to the National Institute of Health.
According to Dr. John Galgiani, the Valley Fever Center director, “I’ve been thinking about a human vaccine all along but taking this through the dog is really a very useful step to show proof of the concept, making the idea of taking it to humans that much more attractive,” wideopencountry.com.
About the disease
Valley Fever is so named because most of the cases have been recorded in California and Arizona. It is a disease as a result of a fungus, Coccidioides in the ground, which affects human beings through aspiration of the spores.
This disease is not spread from person to person. Although the disease does give symptoms signaling lung infection some do not get the disease.
When affected, most patients only develop respiratory symptoms that mimic other lung diseases’ common symptoms.
Still, the symptoms that develop in infected patients may lead to up to 10 percent of those patients having long-term effects on the lungs.
In the worst cases, even 1 percent develop a disseminated type of the infection.
This severe form of the disease will result in the spread of the inflammation to other tissues of the body.
These could be skin, skeletal and muscular systems, joints, or even the nervous system in this case, the brain.
The latter can cause meningitis and it can be fatal.