Fungal exposome, human health and unmet needs: a 2022 update with special focus on allergy

Abstract

Humans inhale, ingest and touch thousands of fungi each day. The ubiquity and diversity of the fungal kingdom are in sharp contrast with their complex and relatively blurred taxonomy and scarce knowledge about their distribution, pathogenic effects, and effective interventions at the environmental and individual levels. Here, we present an overview of salient features of fungi as permanent players of the human exposome and key determinants of human health. Improved understanding of the fungal exposome sheds new light on the epidemiology of fungal-related diseases, their immunological substratum, the currently available methods, and biomarkers for environmental and medical fungi. Unmet needs are described and potential approaches are highlighted as perspectives.

Allergic diseases and fungal exposome: Prevention is better than cure

“…Knowledge of which airborne fungi, determination of the fungal exposome and fungal disease itself are all necessary to optimize diagnosis and management. Joana Vitte and colleagues propose a very informative review in this issue summarizing fungal allergic diseases and the unmet needs for diagnosis and management 2 . Among them, the authors underline the significance of fungal sensitization on lung function and its prevalence and call for optimization of measurement tools from standard culturomic to high‐throughput biological and biostatistical methods.…”