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Review
. 2017 Oct 18;3(4):57.
doi: 10.3390/jof3040057.

Global and Multi-National Prevalence of Fungal Diseases-Estimate Precision

Felix Bongomin  1   2   3 , Sara Gago  4   5   6 , Rita O Oladele  7   8 , David W Denning  9   10   11   12
Affiliations
Review

Global and Multi-National Prevalence of Fungal Diseases-Estimate Precision

Felix Bongomin et al. J Fungi (Basel). .

Abstract

Fungal diseases kill more than 1.5 million and affect over a billion people. However, they are still a neglected topic by public health authorities even though most deaths from fungal diseases are avoidable. Serious fungal infections occur as a consequence of other health problems including asthma, AIDS, cancer, organ transplantation and corticosteroid therapies. Early accurate diagnosis allows prompt antifungal therapy; however this is often delayed or unavailable leading to death, serious chronic illness or blindness. Recent global estimates have found 3,000,000 cases of chronic pulmonary aspergillosis, ~223,100 cases of cryptococcal meningitis complicating HIV/AIDS, ~700,000 cases of invasive candidiasis, ~500,000 cases of Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia, ~250,000 cases of invasive aspergillosis, ~100,000 cases of disseminated histoplasmosis, over 10,000,000 cases of fungal asthma and ~1,000,000 cases of fungal keratitis occur annually. Since 2013, the Leading International Fungal Education (LIFE) portal has facilitated the estimation of the burden of serious fungal infections country by country for over 5.7 billion people (>80% of the world's population). These studies have shown differences in the global burden between countries, within regions of the same country and between at risk populations. Here we interrogate the accuracy of these fungal infection burden estimates in the 43 published papers within the LIFE initiative.

Keywords: estimate precision; fungal diseases; global prevalence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Denning and family hold Founder shares in F2G Ltd., a University of Manchester spin-out antifungal discovery company. He acts or has recently acted as a consultant to Astellas, Sigma Tau, Basilea, Scynexis, Cidara, Biosergen, Quintiles, Pulmatrix, Pulmocide and Zambon. In the last 3 years, he has been paid for talks on behalf of Astellas, Dynamiker, Gilead, Merck and Pfizer. He is a longstanding member of the Infectious Disease Society of America Aspergillosis Guidelines group, the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Aspergillosis Guidelines group and the British Society for Medical Mycology Standards of Care committee. Felix Bongomin, Sara Gago and Rita O. Oladele declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A map showing completed country estimates of fungal diseases by August 2017.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Prevalence of invasive aspergillosis in a continental level. * p < 0.05.
Figure 3
Figure 3
CPA prevalence across continents. * p < 0.05.
Figure 4
Figure 4
ABPA prevalence across countries. ** p < 0.01.
Figure 5
Figure 5
SAFS prevalence across continents. *** p < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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