{"id":9522,"date":"2025-05-21T14:05:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T19:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9522"},"modified":"2025-05-21T14:05:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T19:05:33","slug":"costa-rica-u-s-family-infected-with-airborne-fungal-disease-after-touring-bat-filled-caves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/05\/21\/costa-rica-u-s-family-infected-with-airborne-fungal-disease-after-touring-bat-filled-caves\/","title":{"rendered":"Costa Rica: U.S. Family Infected With Airborne Fungal Disease After Touring Bat-Filled Caves"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/u-s-family-infected-with-airborne-fungal-disease-after-touring-bat-filled-caves-2000605418\">Gizmodo<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A family vacation to Costa Rica turned sour after 12 of 13 relatives developed symptoms of a fungal lung infection following an excursion through bat-filled caves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In season two of\u00a0<em>The Last of Us<\/em>, the cordyceps fungus\u2014spoiler alert\u2014becomes airborne, meaning the fungal infection can spread not just through bites but also when humans inhale its spores. While the TV show is highly fictitious, airborne fungi are most certainly not. A U.S. family now knows this better than most, since 12 of their members became ill after touring a bat cave in Costa Rica. In a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/volumes\/74\/wr\/mm7417a1.htm\">paper<\/a>\u00a0published Thursday in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers described 12 confirmed or probable cases of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/my.clevelandclinic.org\/health\/diseases\/24811-histoplasmosis\">histoplasmosis<\/a>: a pulmonary infection caused by inhaling the fungus\u00a0<em>Histoplasma capsulatum<\/em>. This fungus lives in soil, frequently alongside bird or bat droppings, and can become airborne if the earth is disturbed. While symptoms are usually subtle, the infection can make infants and immunocompromised people vulnerable to more serious illnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/u-s-family-infected-with-airborne-fungal-disease-after-touring-bat-filled-caves-2000605418\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\" J qfzofKJo\"> J qfzofKJo<\/a> --><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gizmodo A family vacation to Costa Rica turned sour after 12 of 13 relatives developed symptoms of a fungal lung infection following an excursion through bat-filled caves. In season two of\u00a0The Last of Us, the cordyceps fungus\u2014spoiler alert\u2014becomes airborne, meaning the fungal infection can spread not just through bites but also when humans inhale its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines","category-fungal-infection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9523,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522\/revisions\/9523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}