Fungal infections: rising threats, diagnostic challenges, and the path forward for clinical microbiology laboratories
Editorial Jayoung Kim Department of Laboratory Medicine, International St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, Catholic Kwandong University, Incheon, Korea Corresponding to Jayoung Kim, E-mail: lmkjy7@gmail.com Ann Clin Microbiol 2024;27(4):217-219. https://doi.org/10.5145/ACM.2024.27.4.1Received on 17 December 2024, Revised on 19 December 2024, Accepted on 19 December 2024, Published on 20 December 2024.Copyright © Korean Society of Clinical Microbiology.This is an Open Access article which is freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Fungal diseases are becoming a growing global health concern, with an estimated annual incidence of 6.5 million cases of invasive fungal infections and approximately 3.8 million associated deaths, including approximately 2.5 million directly attributable to fungal infections [1]. The World Health Organization, in its first fungal priority pathogen list, identified 19 major fungal pathogens posing considerable public health threats, with Candida albicans, Candida auris, and Cryptococcus neoformans classified as critical fungal pathogens [2]. Moreover, since