“As soon as you have blackish stains on the walls, there is aspergillus in there” underlined Dr. Cendrine Godet, during the International Congress of the European Society of Respiratory Diseases (ERS). Pulmonologist at Poitiers University Hospital, she decided to draw attention to chronic pulmonary aspergillosis, a disease caused by this fungus, which would represent a danger for all people whose lungs are already weakened, either because they smoke, either because they have asthma or have suffered from lung cancer.
“It can also be patients who have a small scar on the lung, left by an old infection, such as pneumonia for example” says Dr Godet at RTL.
The diagnosis is often late because the symptoms (cough, shortness of breath) are not specific to the disease. And for now, the only way to fight the respiratory infection is with a antibiotic treatment which lasts for several months and leads to resistance.
A treatment 50 times cheaper
So Dr Godet, accompanied by two other specialists, will launch a study by the end of the year which will compare the classic treatment with an alternative treatment in the form of an aerosol. “The idea is to make the drug breathe through the same place as the spores, to have high concentrations in the infected areas”, explains Dr. Godet. If this treatment works, it could also cost 50 times less than the initial treatment.
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