CASE REPORT article
Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Heart Valve Disease
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2025.1643975
'Mushroom in the Heart': A Volvariella Volvacea Infective Endocarditis Case Report
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Cardiac Surgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital (CAMS), Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Volvariella volvacea (V. volvacea ), an edible mushroom, may act as a pathogenic agent causing invasive fungal infections (IFIs) in immunocompromised patients. We present a 38-year-old male with persistent high fever post-allo-HSCT. Plasma mNGS revealed rising V. volvacea DNA loads (1,137 copies/μL). Intravenous antifungal therapy was initiated upon the diagnosis of IFI. Transthoracic echocardiography showed a 4×1 cm left atrial vegetation, with enhanced CT confirming multiorgan septic emboli (brain and kidney). PET/CT revealed a left atrial vegetation originating from a right lung infectious lesion, spreading contiguously into the left atrium via the pulmonary vein. Urgent vegetation resection was performed, followed by continued intravenous antifungal treatment. At the 5-month follow-up, the patient was afebrile with negative mNGS, completely resolved pulmonary lesion, and an improved quality of life. This case highlights the potential value of surgical-targeted antifungal therapy for fungal endocarditis and suggests practical principles: including mNGS-guided diagnosis, urgent surgical excision, long-term optimized antifungal therapy, and regular follow-up surveillance of the residual infected lesion.
Keywords: Volvariella volvacea, Infective endocarditis, invasive fungal infections, Allogeneic HSCT, Fungal endocarditis surgery
Received: 09 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mao, Liu, Zhang and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jun Zheng, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital (CAMS), Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.