SALT LAKE CITY — A lesser-known fungal disease infecting Utahns is getting renewed attention from a team of scientists at the University of Utah.
The school recently received a three-year grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to pay for "Valley Fever" research in Washington County, which is being led by Katharine Walter, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the university.
“Valley Fever is a rapidly emerging fungal disease found in parts of the American West, as well as dry parts of Central and South America,” explained Walter.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Valley Fever is an infection that’s caused by a fungus that lives in the soil. Both people and animals can contract Valley Fever only if they inhale the microscopic fungal spores from the air. It can’t be passed human-to-human, animal-to-human, or vice versa.
Since about 2009, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services has been tracking Valley Fever cases in humans.
“We have seen a pretty steady increase in the number of cases,” according to BreAnne Osborn, an epidemiologist with the state agency.
Osborn says most cases have been reported in the Southwestern part of the state but suspects the fungus lives in other parts, too.
“I think our biggest question with Valley Fever is where does the fungus live, and where will the fungus live in the future,” she explains.
Those are questions Walter is hoping to answer through her current field research. She says they’re starting to sample soil as well as rodents. Subsequently, they’ll take the soil back to the lab, and using molecular methods, they’ll test to see if the soil has DNA from the fungus present.
“There are a lot of open questions about Valley Fever. It is an understudied pathogen,” Walter explains. “The CDC’s risk map of where they think Valley Fever exists now is drawn from skin testing studies that were done in the 1940s and 1950s.”
She adds that they think the range where the fungus can live in the soil will expand in Utah with climate change as well as rapid development happening in and around the St. George metro area.
As they work to update where the fungus is found, Walter hopes they can raise awareness among people who are at a greater risk of severe illness from the infection including elderly, pregnant, and those with weakened immune systems.
Severe illness is a rarity, though. It’s more common for people to either not get sick at all or experience mild symptoms from Valley Fever that typically go away on their own. Those symptoms include rash, fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, and cough. If these symptoms persist for more than a week, the CDC recommends asking a healthcare provider to get a Valley Fever test.
Ultimately, Walter hopes the findings from her research help educate people, and their healthcare providers.
