Plain language summary: Did the COVID-19 pandemic change the resistance to current antifungal medicines?

ABSTRACT

WHAT IS THIS SUMMARY ABOUT? Previous research shows that patients with COVID-19 have a high chance of getting fungal infections. Medicines called antifungals are used to treat fungal infections. However, some fungi are resistant, which means the fungi are not killed by the antifungals and they keep growing, which can make the patients sicker and even die. This is a summary of a study that looked at whether different types of fungi and their resistance to antifungals changed from before COVID-19 to during the pandemic. WHAT WERE THE RESULTS? We found that some fungi were more common before while others were more common during the pandemic. We also observed that resistance to antifungals did not change much either between fungi collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. WHAT DO THE RESULTS OF THE STUDY MEAN? Knowing which fungal species are resistant to each antifungal can help doctors choose the best treatment. The results from this study may help scientists understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on antifungal resistance.