Valley fever could be spreading across the U.S by climate change: Report

Article content

A fungal infection that predominately lives in soil in the southwestern United States could be spreading, with a study predicting it is likely to be found as far north as the U.S.-Canada border due to climate change.

Article content

Valley fever is an infection caused by the breathing in of a fungus called coccidioides, and is known to live in the soil in the southwestern U.S. and parts of Mexico and Central and South America.

Article content

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s website, most people who breathe in the spores don’t get sick, while people who do get sick will recover on their own within weeks to months, but some will need antifungal medication.

While the fungus generally prefers warm, arid climates in the southwest, a 2019 GeoHealth study believes weather caused by climate change could spread the fungus into northwestern states, extending to the Canadian border before the end of the century.

“As the temperatures warm up, and the western half of the U.S. stays quite dry, our desert-like soils will kind of expand and these drier conditions could allow coccidioides to live in new places,” Morgan Gorris, who led the GeoHealth study while at the University of California, Irvine, told Today.com.

Article content

“We have seen a gradual increase in cases over the last five years, and a greater number of patients are coming into our clinic for diagnosis and treatment,” California-based Dr. George Thompson told Fox News Digital.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

In response to the GeoHealth study, Thompson, a professor at UC Davis Health and co-director of the Center for Valley fever in Sacramento, said he was skeptical at first, “but I’ve recently heard about new cases emerging in Nebraska and even Missouri, so I think it’s in the realm of possibility.”

Symptoms of valley fever include fatigue, cough, fever, shortness of breath, headache, night sweats, muscle aches or joint pain, and rash on the upper body or legs.

About 20,000 cases of the infection were reported to the CDC in 2019, with 97% of cases found in Arizona and California. Rates of infection are highest among people 60 and older.

The CDC says about 200 people die from valley fever each year.

The most common way to diagnose the illness is through a blood test that detects antibodies, but health-care providers may do imaging tests such as chest X-rays or CT scans of the lungs to look for valley fever pneumonia, according to the CDC.

There is currently no vaccine to prevent valley fever.