Editorial: An omics perspective on fungal Infection: toward next-generation diagnosis and therapy

Abstract

[Excerpt] Fungal infections are estimated to occur in over a billion people each year, and evidence suggests the rate is increasing. Vaccines are unavailable, and despite progress in diagnosis and therapy, the management of fungal infections is a challenging endeavor associated with unacceptable mortality rates, particularly in immunocompromised hosts (Kontoyiannis et al., 2010; Pagano et al., 2010). Importantly, the risk of infection and its clinical outcome vary significantly even among patients with similar predisposing conditions (Carvalho et al., 2010). Concerns over excessive prescription of antifungals and the remarkable burden conveyed to healthcare systems have encouraged efforts to decipher the molecular and cellular causes underlying variable susceptibility to infection (Cunha and Carvalho, 2012).[...]