Understanding the Rise and Spread of Candida auris
In the second installment of the short series around fungal infections, Jatin Vyas, PhD, MD, discusses the increase in Candida auris including its unique clades and past challenges in diagnosing this difficult-to-treat infection.
This is a short series discussing fungal infections including newer treatment concepts, the distinct geography of clades and the increasing spread of Candida auris, and insights around developing therapeutics for fungal infections.
In its most recent statistics on its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were a reported 6,304 clinical cases of Candida auris (C auris) in 2024. The number of cases has exploded in the last decade with as little as 48 cases reported in 2016.1
The reasons for this significant rise in cases is multifactorial, according to Jatin Vyas, PhD, MD, professor of Medicine, Columbia University, associate dean for Academic Innovation, and director of Physician- Scientist Programs at the Vagelos Institute for Biomedical Research Education. He says there have been a few challenges associated with diagnosis and spread, starting with identification and awareness of it.
“In the early days, it was being misidentified by our systems as other species of Candida or even another fungal organisms. And now that we recognize that Candida auris is a distinct entity, we've honed our surveillance to be able to find it and to look for it.”
Another aspect is there has been some data to suggest dominant clades spontaneously arose in geographic areas in the US.
“The organisms that we see here in in the United States are predominantly here—we call them clades—That clade is different than what you see in Europe. So the idea that one of the reasons why we're starting to see an emergence of that is probably because of some favorable climate issues, and this organism has now started to prosper.”
The third challenge is that it is a “sticky organism,” according to Vyas, which makes it difficult to eradicate in healthcare facilities.
“It requires special cleaning for this organism to be decontaminated and be essentially free of Candida auris. And that has important healthcare implications. In skilled nursing facilities, in dialysis centers, in acute care hospitals, patients who are either infected or colonized with Candida auris, those spaces that they occupy may also become colonized with Candida auris, and if special disinfectants are not used, those organisms can persist in the environment and potentially then be spread to other patients that occupy those same spaces,” he said.
In the final episode of the series, Vyas talks about the antifungal pipeline.
Reference
1. Tracking C auris. CDC. March 3. 2025. Accessed March 31, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/candida-auris/tracking-c-auris/index.html
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