Don’t be daunted by the length of this disease name or just how difficult it looks to pronounce. By the end of the episode, you’ll be saying it right along with us, and bonus, you’ll also be armed with a whole bunch of excellent trivia about this fascinating fungal disease. In this episode, we dive right into all things coccidioidomycosis, also known as Valley fever, which also happens to be the first human fungal pathogen we’ve covered. We’ll walk you through its unusual dual natured lifecycle, its somewhat recent but surprisingly rich history, and the present threat it poses, especially in light of climate change and the United States prison system. This fungus is much more amongus than you may have suspected. We are also so lucky to be joined by Tori, who shared with us her firsthand account of contracting this fierce fungus.
| History | Biology |
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| Barker, Bridget M., et al. “Coccidioides ecology and genomics.” Medical mycology 57.Supplement_1 (2019): S21-S29. | Twarog, M., & Thompson III, G. R. (2015, October). Coccidioidomycosis: recent updates. In Seminars in respiratory and critical care medicine (Vol. 36, No. 05, pp. 746-755). Thieme Medical Publishers. |
| Deresinski, Stan, and Laurence F. Mirels. “Coccidioidomycosis: What a long strange trip it’s been.” Medical mycology 57.S | Welsh, O., Vera-Cabrera, L., Rendon, A., Gonzalez, G., & Bonifaz, A. (2012). Coccidioidomycosis. Clinics in dermatology, 30(6), 573-591. |
| Dickson, Ernest C. ““Valley fever” of the San Joaquin Valley and fungus Coccidioides.” California and western medicine 47.3 (1937): 151. | Parish, J. M., & Blair, J. E. (2008, March). Coccidioidomycosis. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 343-349). Elsevier. |
| Dixon, D. M. “Coccidioides immitis as a select agent of bioterrorism.” Journal of Applied Microbiology 91.4 (2001): 602-605. | Galgiani, J. N., Ampel, N. M., Blair, J. E., Catanzaro, A., Johnson, R. H., Stevens, D. A., & Williams, P. L. (2005). Coccidioidomycosis. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 41(9), 1217-1223. |
| Engelthaler, David M., et al. “Local population structure and patterns of Western Hemisphere dispersal for Coccidioides spp., the fungal cause of Valley Fever.” MBio 7.2 (2016). | Valdivia, Lisa, et al. “Coccidioidomycosis as a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia.” Emerging infectious diseases 12.6 (2006): 958. |
| Fisher, Matthew C., et al. “Biogeographic range expansion into South America by Coccidioides immitis mirrors New World patterns of human migration.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98.8 (2001): 4558-4562. | Tartof, S. Y., Benedict, K., Xie, F., Rieg, G. K., Yu, K. C., Contreras, R., … & Mody, R. K. (2018). Testing for coccidioidomycosis among community-acquired pneumonia patients, southern California, USA. Emerging infectious diseases, 24(4), 779. |
| Fisher, M. C., et al. “Molecular and phenotypic description of Coccidioides posadasii sp. nov., previously recognized as the non-California population of Coccidioides immitis.” Mycologia 94.1 (2002): 73-84. | Brown, J., Benedict, K., Park, B. J., & Thompson III, G. R. (2013). Coccidioidomycosis: epidemiology. Clinical epidemiology, 5, 185. |
| Freedman, Michael, et al. “Coccidioidomycosis outbreaks, United States and worldwide, 1940–2015.” Emerging infectious diseases 24.3 (2018): 417. | CDC Coccidioidomycosis Statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/diseases/coccidioidomycosis/statistics.html |
| Harrison, William R., Charles F. Merbs, and C. R. Leathers. “Evidence of coccidioidomycosis in the skeleton of an ancient Arizona Indian.” Journal of Infectious Diseases 164.2 (1991): 436-437. | Orion Z McCotter, Kaitlin Benedict, David M Engelthaler, Ken Komatsu, Kimberley D Lucas, Janet C Mohle-Boetani, Hanna Oltean, Duc Vugia, Tom M Chiller, Gail L Sondermeyer Cooksey, Alyssa Nguyen, Chandler C Roe, Charlotte Wheeler, Rebecca Sunenshine, Update on the Epidemiology of coccidioidomycosis in the United States, Medical Mycology, Volume 57, Issue Supplement_1, February 2019, Pages S30–S40 |
| Hirschmann, Jan V. “The early history of coccidioidomycosis: 1892–1945.” Clinical Infectious Diseases 44.9 (2007): 1202-1207. | Comrie, A. C. (2005). Climate factors influencing coccidioidomycosis seasonality and outbreaks. Environmental health perspectives, 113(6), 688-692. |
| Kirkland, Theo N., and Joshua Fierer. “Coccidioidomycosis: a reemerging infectious disease.” Emerging infectious diseases 2.3 (1996): 192. | Weaver, E. A., & Kolivras, K. N. (2018). Investigating the relationship between climate and valley fever (coccidioidomycosis). EcoHealth, 15(4), 840-852. |
| Koufopanou, Vassiliki, et al. “Gene genealogies, cryptic species, and molecular evolution in the human pathogen Coccidioides immitis and relatives (Ascomycota, Onygenales).” Molecular Biology and Evolution 18.7 (2001): 1246-1258. | Tamerius, J. D., & Comrie, A. C. (2011). Coccidioidomycosis incidence in Arizona predicted by seasonal precipitation. PloS one, 6(6), e21009. |
| Lacy, George H., and Frank E. Swatek. “Soil ecology of Coccidioides immitis at Amerindian middens in California.” Applied microbiology 27.2 (1974): 379-388. | Jain, S., Self, W. H., Wunderink, R. G., Fakhran, S., Balk, R., Bramley, A. M., … & Finelli, L. (2015). Community-acquired pneumonia requiring hospitalization among US adults. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(5), 415-427. |
| Lewis, Eric RG, Jolene R. Bowers, and Bridget M. Barker. “Dust devil: the life and times of the fungus that causes valley fever.” PLoS Pathog 11.5 (2015): e1004762. | |
| Smith, Charles Edward. “Epidemiology of acute coccidioidomycosis with erythema nodosum (“San Joaquin” or “Valley Fever”).” American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health 30.6 (1940): 600-611. |
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