A FUNGAL infection ravaged a young chef's body, leaving his lungs "looking like Swiss cheese" before it killed him.
Ian Pritchard was just 29 when he caught blastomycosis - an illness caused by the fungus blastomyces mainly found in soil in wooded areas.
The man, from Michigan, US, was taken off life support on February 3 at his request after weeks of suffering in agony.
He was initially hospitalised in early November 2023 with a flu-like illness.
As his condition deteriorated, doctors decided to transfer him to an intensive care unit in Detroit, where he was soon diagnosed with a fatal condition.
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Scans, shown to his family, revealed the fungal spores had begun to eat away at his internal organs.
“They showed us a picture of his lungs, and they literally looked like Swiss cheese,” his dad, Ron Pritchard, told UpNorthLive in December.
Doctors decided to put Ian on life support and in a medically-induced coma to keep his lungs from having to work too hard while giving them time to heal.
Blastomyces tend to reside in moist soil, rotting wood and leaves.
If the ground is disturbed, the spores can be thrown into the air and inhaled by passers-by.
If the spores are breathed in, they can travel deep into the lungs and cause a fungal infection.
Symptoms include a cough, fever, chills, muscle aches, joint pain, and chest pain.
It is not spread from person to person, but it can spread within an infected person to other body parts, like the skin or bones.
The fungus can be deadly if not caught early.
In Ian's case, experts were unable to eradicate the infection with antifungal medicine, which would have set him up for a life-saving lung transplant.
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His family are obviously devastated and heartbroken.
Wendy Sobeck
Dad Ron's coworkers set up a GoFundMe page to help the family through what they called a "major medical crisis" by covering costs to stay with their son in the hospital and the medical bills piling up.
Ian’s antifungal medicines alone cost about $7,000 [£5,550] for a month’s supply.
According to an update on the fundraising page, Ian was communicative in his final days, and he decided to let go, asking his family to pull the plug.
Ian died the evening of February 3, just days before his 30th birthday, surrounded by his parents and sister.
“Ron and his family are obviously devastated and heartbroken,” Ron's colleague Wendy Sobeck said in an announcement on the GoFundMe page.
“Ron told me Ian decided to come off life-support.
"He was quite alert today and indicated to them that he was ready to go.
"The young man has been in the hospital since the week before Thanksgiving.
"The blastomycosis fungal infection ravaged Ian’s lungs beyond repair.”
Infections in the Midwest have been ticking up in recent years.
However, the true toll of the fungus in the US is not known because the vast majority of states are not required to report cases to the government.
There are only one to three cases per 100,000 people yearly in states where blastomycosis is a reportable condition.
Globally, the number of deaths triggered by nasty fungal infections has doubled in the last decade.
Antifungal resistance, plus doctors' inability to recognise the signs of fungal diseases in time, is believed to be behind the surge.
It's now thought that fungal infections make up nearly 6.8 per cent of global deaths - with 3.8million losing their lives to the infections annually.
The WHO last year warned that deadly and treatment resistant fungal infections are on the rise, naming 19 fungal pathogens that "pose a threat to humanity".
This listed candida, aspergillus, and black fungus as some of the biggest killers.
