A newly detected skin infection, previously unseen in the United States, has been found in two patients in New York City.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified a drug-resistant infection causing severe cases of ringworm, characterized by itchy, red rashes covering large areas of the body.
A rash had erupted across most of her body and typical antifungal creams did nothing to alleviate it.
“My radar went up immediately,” said Dr. Avrom Caplan, an assistant professor of dermatology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, who treated the patient and was one of the report’s authors.
The woman’s infection turned out to be caused by a relatively new species of ringworm-causing fungus, called Trichophyton indotineae.
Over the past decade, infections from this drug-resistant fungus have spread rapidly in South Asia, likely driven by overuse of medications to treat them, including topical antifungals and corticosteroids, the CDC report said.
The woman’s case spurred Caplan to ask his colleagues if they had seen similar infections. He soon discovered a second case in a 28-year-old New York woman.
That woman had developed ringworm across much of her body during the summer of 2021. In this case, however, the patient had not traveled outside the U.S.
Neither woman had underlying health conditions that might increase their risk for drug-resistant infections.
Caplan alerted public health officials about the two cases in February. Outside Asia, cases have been identified in Europe and Canada.
Trichophyton indotineae’s emergence in the U.S. did not surprise Dr. Jill Weatherhead, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
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