Is Severe Influenza a Risk Factor for Aspergillosis?
Mitsuru Toda, MS, PhD, discusses research that discovered 94 patients who had invasive aspergillosis with influenza.
Segment Description: Mitsuru Toda, MS, PhD, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Mycotic Diseases Branch, along with her team, discovered 94 patients who had invasive aspergillosis with influenza.
Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):
Toda: We looked at national influenza surveillance in 30 different sites and 30 different states among a 12-year period. We saw among 92,000 patients there were 94 patients who had invasive aspergillosis with influenza and this number seems a little low, but when you look at publications in the past 60 years, only 57 cases have been described globally, so we thought that was pretty striking.
In in the study that we looked at — it was national influenza surveillance – and we looked at ICD codes which, we know is not a good indicator to look at for infection and we think that clinicians need to be more aware of this issue and also that fungal diseases should be diagnosed more. So, in order to improve surveillance diagnosing fungal infections would be really key.
