What is Invasive Aspergillosis?
Invasive aspergillosis is a serious fungal infection caused by Aspergillus species and kills more than half of a million people each year worldwide. (REF)(REF)(REF). Aspergillus invades the lungs of immunocompromised patients and can spread to the bloodstream and other key organs leading to a high mortality rate of 30-80% (REF).
Current treatment guidelines recommend the use of azoles as the initial first-line therapy. However, patients face unsatisfactory clinical outcomes, with resistance to the standard of care, voriconazole, that can be as high as 20% (REF) and require long treatment durations. Current therapies also often exhibit drug-drug interactions, and the recent emergence of azole resistant A. fumigatus, one of the major causes of aspergillosis is increasingly becoming a clinical concern worldwide. Currently, aspergillosis cases are becoming an increasing problem among patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) suffering from COVID-19 (REF)”