Medical
Dear Friends of the Atlas,
In the course of the last century, numerous handbooks on clinical mycology have appeared. Many of these were great in their time, and have guided the medical mycologist through the difficult area of pathogenic and opportunistic fungi. However, scientific and medical knowledge advances rapidly. After a few decades, books inevitably become outdated. For this reason, the Atlas of Clinical Fungi on fungal identification has appeared in two versions: a print-version for the overview where the basic information remains valid for a long time, and a web-version to search for details and novelties. The web-version is manually edited on a regular basis and tries to keep up with developments in diversity of clinically relevant moulds and yeasts.
This system is much appreciated by the clinical user and could be applied to other areas of medical mycology, where we have witnessed similar dramatic changes in techniques and understanding. We previously informed you about the initiative of an Atlas of Veterinary Fungi, where animal diseases are described, with a link to the existing Atlas for the information on the etiologic agents. The description of human diseases would also benefit from such a system that keeps up with important changes in clinical management, such as the emerging diseases in patients with hidden inherited immune disorders, novel epidemic entities in Candida/Candidozyma, Sporothrix and Trichophyton, Covid-19-associated infections, fatal emergomycoses, and many others. We therefore launched a model chapter for an Atlas of Medical Mycology, where human diseases are described, again with links to the existing Atlas for information on the fungi. This trial chapter describes the dermatophytosis, infections caused by the pathogens in Trichophyton, Microsporum and Epidermophyton and their relatives.
All chapters in both ‘Atlases’ on diseases, animal or human, will be multi-authored by experts in the field. Statements in the text are supported by a wealth of recently published papers. We try to cover all disease entities according to the system recently adopted in the medical community (10.1128/jcm.00937-24, J Clin Microbiol 2024). The chapters will remain alive, i.e., changeable with new data any time, and remaining open for additional authors in case of significant changes. We cordially invite volunteers to submit chapters in this style. If you would like to contribute, please write to support@atlasclinicalfungi.org. The current dermatophytosis chapter can be found by clicking ‘Atlas of Veterinary Fungi’ in the Atlas menu bar at the right. Below the finished veterinary chapters, you will find the dermatophytosis chapter. Comments and suggestions will be much appreciated. We aim to have high-quality photos of all clinical types, preferably caused by a known etiologic agent with sequence data in GenBank. Photos are combined in photoplates, and references are integrated in the online database of Atlas of Clinical Fungi.
The project is undertaken by the Foundation Atlas of Clinical Fungi on a non-profit basis.
