[HN Gopher] Toxic black mold is growing in my brain
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Toxic black mold is growing in my brain
        
       Author : yellow_lead
       Score  : 149 points
       Date   : 2022-01-28 05:42 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.buzzfeednews.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.buzzfeednews.com)
        
       | carlmr wrote:
       | If the drugs can't enter due to the BBB isn't the only chance to
       | prime his immune system to handle it? Maybe another use case for
       | specialized mRNA vaccines?
        
         | eternityforest wrote:
         | Why can't the put drugs directly on the other side of the
         | barrier? Or is it not a physical thing with sides like that?
        
           | penjelly wrote:
           | pretty sure you cant inject drugs directly into your brain
        
             | tata71 wrote:
             | Someone needs to catch up with Dr House.
        
             | meepmorp wrote:
             | No, there are drugs that are injected intrathecally either
             | into the subarachnoid space or spinal column.
        
           | mateo1 wrote:
           | The blood brain barrier is the walls of the arteries. Perhaps
           | you can "inject" something in the interstitial fluid but I
           | imagine the volume would be tiny and fluid motion very slow.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | xyzal wrote:
       | If you're in temptation to image search cerebral fungal
       | infection, don't.
        
       | mdrzn wrote:
       | Beautifully written, horrifying story. Had no idea this kind of
       | "illness" even existed.
        
       | 3327 wrote:
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | So the real question is... If there are only 120 cases of this
       | disease worldwide... Where did it come from originally, and how
       | does it spread from person to person.
        
         | ChrisLomont wrote:
         | It doesn't need to spread from person to person. Most likely
         | people get it from rare environment conditions and bad luck.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | In which case... where in the environment does it grow? If
           | it's all growing in a cave somewhere, we can find it and
           | disinfect it or at least put up a fence.
        
             | ChrisLomont wrote:
             | Many molds are everywhere, in soil all over the planet.
             | Most likely you are never going to eradicate such things.
        
         | stjohnswarts wrote:
         | It's all summed up on wikipedia, per the usual for the curious.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladophialophora_bantiana
        
       | throwuxiytayq wrote:
       | Jesus, I can't read this, it's too much. Poor guy. I wish him all
       | the best.
        
         | Rowern wrote:
         | I won't try to do a TL;DR, but from reading the full article,
         | it seems like he is doing kind of fine right now. He is still
         | sick but he is currently writing a thesis. The article has a
         | really positive vibe to it even though it is a really rare
         | disease.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | There are a lot of pathogens that cause long term, sometimes
       | minor or sometimes major ailments - mono, lyme disease, HPV, etc.
       | There may be many many more we don't know about. Could we
       | identify them by blending up a dead persons brain, then DNA
       | sequencing the pulp? Any non-human DNA can then be investigated,
       | and with data from enough people we might start to see patterns,
       | like "this particular non-human genome causes alzheimer's" or
       | "this causes lung cancer".
        
       | sizzle wrote:
       | Why can't they inject the anti-fungal drugs beyond the blood
       | brain barrier manually if it isn't passing through from the
       | blood?
       | 
       | This is terrifying and I genuinely hope they cure this for all of
       | humanity's sake.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-01-30 23:02 UTC)