by Brenda Schurrer-Maro

Created on: April 29, 2010

Cryptococcus gattii, or c. gattii, is a relatively new strain of airborne fungus affecting Canada's Vancouver Island since 1999, and more recently moving into the Northwest United States.  Before its discovery on Vancouver Island, it was believed to affect only tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world such as Australia and South America.  However, emerging cases of confirmed c. gattii infection in British Columbia and Oregon have shown that it has either spread to, or has just been laying dormant in those temperate regions. 

C. gattii is a fungal yeast infection which causes medical issues from pneumonia to meningitis, and can include multiple other life threatening symptoms.  Commonly, patients afflicted develop what are known as cryptococcomas.  A cryptococcoma is an infectious tumor caused by a living organism, in this case the c. gattii fungi.  These tumors are typically found in the brain, but have also been located in the lungs, eyes, prostate and elsewhere in the body.  This deadly disease affects not only humans, but has also been found in cats, dogs, birds, dolphin, llama and livestock.

To date, there have been around 50 known cases of c. gattii in the Northwest United States and of those about 10 patients have died (Doheny, 2010).  This is about 20% of those infected!  This shows that the U.S. strain is a particularly virile version of the British Columbia strain which has only killed 19 out of 218 patients, a death rate of 8.7%. 

Many deaths caused by c. gattii occur because doctors are generally unfamiliar with it and therefore it's often misdiagnosed as cryptococcus neoformans, a weaker cousin-fungus.  These misdiagnoses can lead to death because, although somewhat similar, c. gattii has a slower response to therapy thus requiring earlier treatment and results in more cryptococcomas which require surgery than c. neoformans.  Another peculiar difference between the two diseases is that c. neoformans is a typically opportunistic disease which affects mostly immunocompromised patients, such as those with HIV, rarely affecting immunocompetent (healthy) individuals.  C. gattii, on the other hand, primarily affects people with healthy immune systems.    

People become infected with c. gattii when they inhale infected microscopic organisms.  Lamentably, there's not anything which can be done to prevent inhalation.  Fortunately, although there are no known

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