In January, David Denning, professor of infectious diseases at Manchester university, gave the public health community a jolt when he published figures for the incidence of and mortality from invasive fungal infections. They were twice as high as previous estimates.
His paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal concluded that, worldwide, 3.8mn people per year die with invasive fungal infections, with the fungus being the main cause of death in 2.5mn cases. This drew attention to a neglected factor in global mortality, now responsible for about 5 per cent of all deaths — which medical mycologists expect climate change to exacerbate.
“People in the field were surprised because they were not expecting such large numbers,” says Denning. “The work has already had a remarkably large number of citations.” His methodology has been questioned, he adds, “but no one has said ‘this is all rubbish’.”