Monday 2 December 2013

Dimorph and Filamentous Fungi

The primary risk to the immunocompromised patient arises from nosocomial infections (or hospital acquired infections). A risk to patients additionally can arise from administered medicines. Until the late 1990s the primary risk was generally regarded as arising from bacteria. However, since 2001 the second most common recall for pharmaceutical medicines has been due to fungal contamination. Moulds are ubiquitous in nature and, therefore they pose a risk to pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. Aspergillus spp., Penicillium spp., Trychophyton spp., and other filamentous fungi have, in some cases, caused significant microbial contamination issues in production environments and manufactured products.

With this important subject, Tim Sandle has written a freely accessible chapter for the book ‘Bacterial and Mycotic Infections in Immunocompromised Hosts: Clinical and Microbiological Aspects’ (edited by Maria Teresa Mascellino), which presents an introduction to this topic of fungal infections of the immunocompromised person. The book is published by OMICS Group eBooks.

"This chapter examines the risks to immunocompromised patients from fungal infections. In doing so the chapter identifies and describes the most common types of infections. The chapter additionally discusses some of the steps taken for the microbiological isolation and assessment of the clinically significant microorganisms and provides an introduction to some of the treatment steps."

The chapter can be viewed on-line here, or as a downloadable pdf document here.

Posted by Tim Sandle

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