California sees an increase in valley fever: NPR

Ari Shapiro, Host:

California has experienced a record number of cases of Valley fever. It is a fungal infection caused by inhaling in spores in the ground. The heaviest form can be fatal or require a lifelong treatment. The disease is most common in California and Arizona. Jerimiah Oetting leads us to Salinas Valley California, an area in which one of the greatest climbs are too listed.

Jerimiah Oetting, Byline: It’s a hot, dry day in Salinas Valley. Fields made of leafy vegetables and vegetables stretch in all directions. Dust clouds rise behind trucks and tractors in the fields and sweep the Highway 101 in the wind. These are the perfect conditions to spread spores of the mushroom, causes Valley fever, and why people who work outside, like farm and construction workers, are particularly at risk.

Jessica Bader: I was asked a lot whether I worked in fields or gardening.

Oetting: Jessica Bader doesn’t work outside. She and her husband Brian Bader live with her two children in Paso Robles at the southern end of the Salinas Valley. At the end of last year, Jessica felt sick with symptoms that resembled flu or Covid-19, but she tested negatively. Your doctor gave her antibiotics for pneumonia, but she got worse.

J Bader: My neck was incredibly stiff. I felt that I couldn’t get up. I had incredibly bad headaches.

Oetting: Then Brian Jessica hurried into the emergency room. She was in seventh month pregnant and it was New Year’s Eve.

J Bader: The worst New Year of all time – just felt absolutely terrible.

Oetting: When the infection was diagnosed, the infection had spread to its spinal cord and brain, a form of the disease called Cocci meningitis. Her husband Brian says the diagnosis is scary.

Brian Bader: You know, the first things you look up with meningitis is fatal.

Oetting: Jessica and her baby survived the tortur, but she takes a powerful antifungals every day to keep the disease at bay.

B Bader: That will never disappear. It is life. She always has to take medicine.

All Radner: It is really dramatic how many cases we have seen.

Oetting: Dr. All Radner has been working as an expert in infectious diseases in Salinas Valley for 30 years. He says a decade ago that Valley Fever was a rarity.

Radner: In the past we may have 40 or 50 cases in one year, and now we are approaching 4 or 500 cases per year.

Oetting: Valley Fever is not contagious. Most cases are so mild that you do not need treatment at all, but anyone who breathes the spores can receive serious infection. Gail Sondermeyer Cooksey is an epidemiologist at the California Department of Public Health. She says that you are not sure why there is an increase in California, but she says it could be due to a few factors. Doctors could test more on it. More construction in new places could disturb the soil. The series of wet years of California recently also played a role.

Gail Sondermeyer Cooksey: When we see longer drought, followed by severe winter rain, we see these ascent areas in valley fever in the following years.

Oetting: She says the mushroom lives in the ground during the damp winter, and its spores spread in the hot, dry months of late summer and autumn when cases in California are often the highest. These so-called growth and wind cycles can intensify with more extreme weather due to climate change.

Sondermeyer Cooksey: There is great concern that changes in the climate and the environment lead to these diseases in the state of California, but also in the United States.

Oetting: Arizona, in which cases are historically higher than in California, also sees a spike, although it is not recorded. In general, cases have increased in the West. In recent years, more cases have been reported outside the typical area of ​​Valley Fever to the state of Washington. According to Sondermeyer Cooksey, doctors and patients should learn more about it because the disease is spread further.

Sondermeyer Cooksey: Awareness of Valley fever is low among public and health service providers. So we want there to be more awareness.

Oetting: Jessica Bader says if she had more information …

J Bader: I would be in a much better place now.

Oetting: It could have been tested earlier before her illness became so serious. For NPR news I am Jerimiah in Paso Robles, California.

(Soundbite by Akon Song, “Crack Rock”)

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