MINI REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1575755
This article is part of the Research TopicEmerging Antimicrobials: Sources, Mechanisms of Action, Spectrum of Activity, Combination Antimicrobial Therapy, and Resistance MechanismsView all 39 articles
Climatic and endothermic thermal stress adaptation may be a major driver of emerging and emergent multidrug resistant fungi
Provisionally accepted
Chibuike Ibe1,2*
Carolina Henritta Pohl1- 1University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
- 2Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria
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The impact of climate change and increasing global temperature is contributing to the emergence of unknown and the reemergence of known fungal pathogens.In the process of adapting to the increasing global temperatures, some fungi have evolved multidrug resistance traits thus narrowing the therapeutic options in our antifungal arsenal. Interestingly, all emerging fungal pathogens and known emergent fungi are multidrug and pandrug resistant, suggesting that the drug resistance traits observed are partly due to thermal stress-induced cross stress-responses. This paper argues that the acquired drug resistance traits may also be driving increased virulence and adaptation to infection-related conditions, resulting in the outbreak of community and hospital infections.Continued surveillance and more research are required to enhance our understanding of the impact of heat-induced evolution of antifungal resistance (AFR) in this rapidly evolving area of research that may define a new era in medical mycology.
Keywords: Temperature increases, emerging and emergent fungi, AFR, Virulence, stress
Received: 12 Feb 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ibe and Pohl. 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: Chibuike Ibe, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
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