Experts say mind-controlling mushrooms aren\u2019t an imminent threat, but anti-fungal drug resistance is.
Here\u2019s the science fact and fiction behind the show, and the possibility of a fungal pandemic.
The first season of HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d ends on Sunday, but there\u2019s still much to learn from the science that inspired it.
In most ways, the show depicts a classic zombie apocalypse.
One morning, everybody is going about their normal life. There\u2019s a mention on the radio of chaos in Jakarta. And by nightfall, twitchy, possessed once-humans are sprinting after the main character.
This time, though, it\u2019s a fungus turning people into zombies.
The new scenario, first realized in the video game that the show is based on, is making viewers wonder whether a fungus pandemic can happen in real life.
\u201cA fungal pandemic is definitely possible,\u201d Norman Van Rhijn, a mycologist researching fungal infections at the University of Manchester, told Insider in an email.
\u201cThe potential is huge for what can emerge and become a pathogen,\u201d Tom Chiller, chief of the fungal disease branch of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Insider. \u201cI am not going to be surprised that more fungi emerge as human pathogens, that become more challenging to treat and more infectious.\u201d
Here\u2019s the science fact and science fiction behind \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d and the threats that fungi pose.
Cordyceps is real, but it only overtakes the brains and bodies of insects \u2014 most famously, ants.
The fungus grows inside an ant\u2019s body, causes the ant to climb upwards, and then sprouts from its head and releases spores, attempting to spread itself far and wide.
Cordyceps can\u2019t survive at human body temperature, so it can\u2019t infect us. But other species of fungus produce substances with mind-altering qualities that can affect human behavior.
Psilocybin facilitator students sit with eye masks on while listening to music during an experiential activity at a training session near Damascus, Oregon.Andrew Selsky\/AP Photo
Some historians attribute the Salem Witch Trials to ergot poisoning, saying that women began behaving strangely and accusing each other of witchcraft after eating infected rye. The psychoactive substance LSD is derived from ergot.
\u201cEvery time you have a beer, your behavior is affected by the byproduct of a fungus, which is ethanol,\u201d David Hughes, who has studied Cordyceps and consulted on the video game \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d told Insider.
The fungus Cryptococcus can also spread from the lungs to the brain and cause meningitis \u2014 inflammation \u2014 that can alter behavior.
Unlike on TV, though, mind-altering fungus \u201cdoesn\u2019t jump into our body and affect a behavior that enables future transmission,\u201d Hughes said.
Fungal diseases can jump from animals to humans. But the idea that a fungus like Cordyceps could mutate enough to make the giant leap from insects to humans, and still keep its ability to effectively manipulate behavior, is far-fetched.
In the infectious-disease world, \u201cnever say never,\u201d Chiller said.
\u201cBut I will say that there\u2019s a lot, a lot of hurdles that need to be overcome,\u201d he continued. \u201cAn ant and a human are dramatically different. We have immune systems, we live at different temperatures, you know, our body temperature is much higher. So there are just some fundamental things that are going to be exceedingly hard for that particular fungus to overcome.\u201d
A mycology specialist in the Vanderbilt Clinical Microbiology Lab for patient care examines samples to isolate and identify specimens for growth in Nashville, Tennessee.Harrison McClary\/Reuters
In \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d the first cases of fictional human Cordyceps appear in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the government asks a leading mycologist to identify the fungus under a microscope and wriggling in the mouth of a dead civilian. Horrified, she learns that 14 people who worked with the victim have disappeared.
\u201cThere is no medicine. There is no vaccine,\u201d she grimly informs a government official. She recommends that the government bomb the entire city to contain the fungus.
In real life, it\u2019s true that there is no vaccine for deadly fungal infections (though experts don\u2019t recommend bombing as a substitute). There are only a few classes of drugs to treat them, and they aren\u2019t always reliable cures.
In fact, because fungi are so similar to humans at the cellular level, many of the drugs that fight them are also toxic to human bodies.
According to Global Action for Fungal Infections, fungi kill more people than malaria.
\u201cThe problem with fungi is we don\u2019t have a lot of things in our toolkit to control them,\u201d Hughes said.
Some deadly fungi, like Candida auris, which emerged in 2009, have even developed a powerful resistance to the anti-fungal drugs we do have. In hospital outbreaks, Candida auris has killed anywhere from 29% to 53% of its victims, according to the World Health Organization.
(Yahoo Entertainment)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Experts say mind-controlling mushrooms aren\u2019t an imminent threat, but anti-fungal drug resistance is.Here\u2019s the science fact and fiction behind the show, and the possibility of a fungal pandemic.The first season of HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d ends on Sunday, but there\u2019s still much to learn from the science that inspired it.In most ways, the show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":333994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}