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A Case of Scedosporium aurantiacum Infection in the United States

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Abstract

Scedosporium aurantiacum is one of the emergent opportunistic fungal pathogens among immunocompromised hosts. Colonization of S. aurantiacum can also occur in patients with underlying lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis. S. aurantiacum is highly resistant to multiple antifungal agents, and management of the infected patients can be very challenging compared to those infected with other species of Scedosporium. Clinical cases have been geographically restricted mostly in Australia with a small number of cases identified in Europe and Japan. Although clinical isolates of S. aurantiacum from the USA have been included in several research studies, no clinical case of S. aurantiacum infection from the USA has been described. We report a case of S. aurantiacum infection acquired in the SA. Awareness of S. aurantiacum among healthcare providers and the species-level identification for Scedosporium are critically important for appropriate selection of antifungal agents and improvement of treatment outcomes.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank staff working in the Mycology Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital for their technical support for this case study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Missouri Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    Masako Mizusawa

  2. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Marissa Totten

  3. Division of Medical Microbiology, Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD, 21287, USA

    Sean X. Zhang

Authors
  1. Masako Mizusawa
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  2. Marissa Totten
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  3. Sean X. Zhang
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Contributions

SZ and MM contributed to conceptualization. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MM. Sequencing analyses were performed by MT. All authors contributed to writing, reviewing and editing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sean X. Zhang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Handling Editor: Vishnu Chaturvedi.

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Mizusawa, M., Totten, M. & Zhang, S.X. A Case of Scedosporium aurantiacum Infection in the United States. Mycopathologia 186, 127–130 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-020-00498-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-020-00498-x

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