Does mold make you sick? Doctors seek answers
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And
Science Editor
Tue Oct 28, 2:40 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fungus expert Joan Bennett did not believe in
so-called toxic mold -- the cause of "sick building syndrome" and many
lawsuits -- until her New Orleans home was flooded during Hurricane
Katrina in 2005.

When she got a whiff of the foul air that the black goo had created in
her home, she decided to change her research focus and try to find out
how and if the fungi that took over most of the flooded homes on the
Gulf Coast might make people ill.

"The overwhelming obnoxiousness of the odor and of the enveloping air
made me start to believe in something that I had never believed in
before -- sick building syndrome," Bennett, of Rutgers University in
New Jersey, told a news conference.

But it has been more difficult than she thought.

Bennett believes that molds could potentially cause illness in certain
susceptible people via volatile organic compounds -- gassy versions of
chemicals produced as the organisms metabolize food.

She has been unable to show this in the lab so far. But she told a
joint meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the
Infectious Diseases Society of America.

She has tested various molds on the laboratory roundworm C. elegans.
"Sometimes the worm swims away and sometimes the worm does nothing and
sometimes the worm eats the fungus," Bennett said.

"I am actually looking for something that has never been discovered by
methods that have never been worked out."

Yet hundreds of lawsuits have been filed -- and some won -- by people
claiming mold in their homes or workplaces has made them ill.

Dr. David Denning of the University of Manchester in Britain said it
is plausible that molds and fungi would emit volatile organic
compounds.

GENETIC SENSITIVITY

If these can be found, they could form the basis of diagnosing fungal
illness as well -- perhaps using a breath test. People with fungal
infections of the lungs, such as aspergillosis, would release these
chemicals when they breathed.

"A certain group of severe asthmatics -- about a million people -- are
sensitive to a number of different fungi," Denning told the news
conference. These include Aspergillis and Candida.

"This is almost certainly a genetic issue," he added. "If you have (a)
predisposition (to asthma), you probably have an additional
predisposition to fungal sensitization."

Dr. David Goldman, a pediatrician in the Bronx, New York, said asthma
rates in his borough are disproportionately high, and he blames in
part Cryptococcus neoformins, a microbe found in pigeon droppings that
causes disease in immune-compromised people.

"We believe this fungus contributes to asthma by modulating the immune
response," Goldman told the news conference.

Both Goldman and Denning said treating patients with antifungal drugs
such as itraconozole and fluconazole helped relieve the symptoms of
patients with severe asthma. This supports evidence that fungi are
contributing to symptoms.

All three experts agreed it would likely take a combination of factors
-- including a person genetically susceptible to molds and unusual
fungal activity -- to cause any disease.

"It is probably a relatively temporary disease, not a life-threatening
disease," Denning said.

"As we sit here we are probably breathing in hundreds of spores,"
Bennett added. "Usually we only get sick if our immune systems are
compromised or if we have this genetic susceptibility to allergy."

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Philip
Barbara)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081028/sc_nm/us_mold_illness_2