Review of etiopathogenesis and Early diagnosis of Mucormycosis

ABSTRACT

Mucormycosis refers to invasive fungal disease whose causative organism are saprophytic fungi. Recently there has been an outbreak of mucor in post covid cases. It is a fatal disease until properly intervened.The literature regarding mucormycosis is scarce. There is urgent need to understand the aetiopathogeneis and clinical features of mucormycosis. This article helps to comprehensively understand the etiopathogenesis in patients having mucormycosis. This narrative review is an attempt to comprehend aetiopathogeneis and early diagnostic features in mucormycosis.Literature on various aspects of mucormycosis was collected from various search engines like pubmed, Google scholar. Various phrases used were mucormycosis, etiology, pathogenesis diagnosis.Various risk factors associated with this disease are use of corticosteroids, metabolic acidosis, diabetes mellitus, burns organ transplants, malignancies and various haematological disorders. Nososcomial infections mostly due to non sterility is proving to be a kajor risk factor has in mucormycosis. Immunocompromised patients are at a greater risk for acquiring infection however few reports of mucormycosis in immunocompetent patients have been published. Angioinvasion leads to thrombosis followed by necrosis of the tissue hampering drug delivery to the target tissue. Angio invasion is the single most important factor explaining pathology.Early diagnosis and intervention is the only key way to treat mucormycosis patients as early diagnosis will help in early treatment and that ultimately decrease angioinvasion and less extensive surgeries. Traditional cultural method can be used for early diagnosis but it has a higher possibility false negative results. Few clinical signs that may help in early diagnosis can be necrotic eschars in various mucosal surfaces, pleuritic pain, ophthalmic symptoms are important markers. Though these clinical signs help, they may present after long time. So imaging techniques like CT scan and MRI have a really important part in early diagnosis. MRI is more sensitive for tthe diagnosis of invasive fungal sinusitis than CT and it also gives less false negative results.